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Henry Ward Beecher, 



Biographical Sketch. 



Rev. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D. 



Successor to Henry Ward Beecher, in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Editor op "The Christian Union, 1 ' (now known as "The Outlook"); 

Author of Notes on the New Revision of the New Testament ; an Illustrated 

Commentary (in Four Volumes) ; A Life of Christ ; A Dictionary 

of Religious Knowledge, etc., etc. 







H. S. GOODSPEED & CO. 

NEW YORK. 



Jot cono*»»*| 



13% 1 1 1 n 
34 B* 



COPYRIGHT 1893, 

BY 

A. E. GOODSPEED. 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



Mr. Beecher was a man of thoughts rather than of 
thought. From his fervid and imaginative prophesy- 
ings a less impassioned and more self-contained nature 
can construct a system of philosophy ; for though he 
always saw in part and prophesied in part, out of these 
partialisms a connected and symmetrical whole can be 
pieced together. But tl^is is because what he saw 
was truth, and truth, however partially seen, is always 
self-consistent ; he himself was never solicitous to 
seem or even to be consistent. He was not the con- 
structor of a system ; he was a generator of thoughts 
— thoughts that were the children of his own ex- 
perience and were always vitalized by his own strong 
nature. New England theology from the days of 
Jonathan Edwards had been essentially rationalistic. 
The processes of the New England pulpit were essen- 
tially intellectual processes. The preacher laid down 
certain propositions, established them either by proof 

3 



4 Henry Ward Beecher. 

texts or by philosophical arguments, and closed his 
hour's discourse with ten or fifteen minutes of prac- 
tical application. The imagination was not cultivated 
and emotional expression was distinctly discouraged. 
The advent of Methodism and the preaching of White- 
field brought into New England new methods and 
gave to the pulpit new and before-unused elements of 
power. The great revival preachers who either im- 
mediately preceded or were contemporaneous with 
Mr. Beecher spoke through the imagination to the 
emotions. The greatest among them combined, as 
their immediate predecessors had not done, the imagi- 
nation and the emotions with the logical faculty. 
Probably the foremost preacher of this transition 
period was Dr. Lyman Beecher, the father of Henry 
Ward. He was scarcely less logical than Jonathan 
Edwards; he was scarcely less impassioned than White- 
field. Born in this period, trained by this father, 
whose home was a continuous theological school, the 
young man learned to believe nothing which he did 
not believe with his whole nature. A merely intel- 
lectual reason never was convincing to him. As little 
was he convinced by a beautiful picture or a pleasur- 
able sentiment. No truth got possession of him un- 
less it at once satisfied his reason and his sentiments. 
Then when it issued forth in expression, it used every 
faculty because it had been previously appropriated by 
every faculty. The imagination had seen it, the 
reason had tested it, the affections had felt it, and all 
three combined to give expression to it. Thus it 



Henry Ward Beec her. 5 

was that Mr. Beecher was at one and the same time 
the most imaginative, the most impassioned, and the 
most rational of preachers. Therefore, as he used now 
one and now another power to give expression to a 
truth which his whole nature had laid hold of, he was 
differently estimated by different critics, by some as a 
rationalist, by others as a sentimentalist. Therefore 
he never retailed truths which he had picked up from 
books, yet was always giving in the pulpit expression 
to truths the raw material of which, so to speak, 
he had gathered from a wide range of reading and 
an even wider range of conversation. He was the 
most original of preachers, because he never gave 
expression to a truth until it had been born within 
him and become by meditation his own ; he never 
could give the opinion of others — not even of the 
Scripture writers — except by reading them in their 
own words ; because all that he read was straight- 
way combined in the laboratory of his own ever-active 
mind with other materials, and issued in forms which 
the original author would not have recognized and 
very probably would have disowned. Therefore he 
was always at his poorest in endeavoring to interpret 
the views of others, whether his object was to com- 
mend or to criticise. Therefore these paragraphs of 
thoughts, flashes of humor or pathos, pictures of 
imagination, resistless appeals to feeling, condensed 
arguments, flashing like the condensed carbon in 
the diamond, give, on the whole, a better picture 
of his iridescent and ebullient nature than any 



6 Henry Ward Beecher. 

single sermon or series of sermons can possibly 
give. 

Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Con- 
necticut, June 24, 18 1 3, the eighth child of Lyman 
and Roxana Foote Beecher. His mother died when 
he was but three years old, but left upon his imagina- 
tion — or shall we not rather say, exerted upon him by 
her saintly though unseen presence ? — a profound and 
lasting influence. " Do you know," he says, " why 
so often I speak what must seem to some of you 
rhapsody of women ? It is because I had a mother, 
and if I were to live a thousand years, I could not ex- 
press what seems to me the least that I owe to her. 
Three years old was I when singing she left me and 
sung on to heaven, where she sings evermore. I have 
only such a remembrance of her as you have of the 
clouds of ten years ago — faint, evanescent; and yet, 
caught by imagination and fed by that which I have 
heard of her and by what my father's thought and 
feeling of her were, it has come to be so much to me 
that no devout Catholic ever saw so much in the 
Virgin Mary as I have seen in my mother, who has 
been a presence to me ever since I can remember." 
His father, a Congregational minister, was one of the 
foremost preachers of an age which sent not a few of 
its strongest intellects into the pulpit. Thoroughly 
and intensely orthodox, he was, at the same time, 
liberal, progressive, catholic, and absolutely genuine. 
He never said anything for effect and never abstained 
from saying anything which he thought true and 



Henry Ward Beecher. 7 

needed. He was passionately fond of music, played 
the violin as his Sunday-evening recreation after 
church, and was a great lover of Walter Scott, whose 
novels were just then attracting the attention of the 
whole English-speaking world and conquering the 
inveterate prejudice of the Puritan against fiction. 
Most important of all, he was a wise father, the ruler 
but also the companion of his boys alike in their 
studies and their recreations. Of his children, five 
won for themselves a large influence and a wide repu- 
tation. Catherine Beecher was one of the pioneers 
in that work of education for women which has led 
to the establishment of such women's colleges as 
"Wellesley," "South Hadley," "Smith," " Vassar," 
and " Bryn Mawr." Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, by 
her pen-and-ink picture of slavery in " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," contributed probably more than any other 
one of the host of anti-slavery reformers to the aboli- 
tion of slavery. Edward Beecher, as preacher, college 
president, and author, easily ranks among the foremost 
theological scholars of his day. Thomas K. Beecher, 
for over quarter of a century pastor of the Congrega- 
tional church at Elmira, New York, has not only 
won a reputation through the State as a preacher of 
remarkable power, but was one of the very first to 
establish a church whose doors are open and whose 
work is continuous throughout the week, and which 
avails itself of every form of influence, social and 
philanthropic, as well as didactic and formally re- 
ligious. As a scholar at Amherst College, 1830-34, 



8 Henry Ward Beecher. 

Henry Ward Beecher took no very high rank, but 
gave in fields outside the regular college course evi- 
dence of his genius. He made a careful study of 
English literature, not then a college study, submitted 
himself to a thorough training in elocution, took up 
the study of phrenology, which he pursued with great 
enthusiasm, gave lectures upon phrenology and 
temperance, took part in revival meetings in the 
neighboring towns, and always was in request. 
During all this time he was thoroughly in earnest, 
conscientious, devout, religious; but the experience 
which shaped and colored his whole after-life did not 
come until he was in Lane Seminary studying, with 
much misgiving, for the ministry. He has more than 
once eloquently described that experience. " I know 
not," he says in one discourse, "what the tablets of 
eternity have written down ; but I think that when I 
stand in Zion and before God, the brightest thin^r 
which I shall look back upon will be that blessed 
morning of May when it pleased God to reveal to my 
wondering soul the idea that it w T as His nature to love 
a man in his sins for the sake of helping him out of/ 
them ; that He did not do it out of compliment to 
Christ, or to a law or a plan of salvation, but from 
the fulness of His great heart ; that He was not made 
mad by sin, but sorry ; that He- was not furious with 
wrath toward the sinner, but pitied him : in short, 
that He felt toward me as my mother felt toward me, 
to whose eyes wrong-doing brought tears, who never 
pressed me so close to her as when I had done 



Henry Ward Beecher. 9 

wrong, and who would fain with her yearning love 
lift me out of trouble." 

From that day to the end of his life, this was Mr. 
Beecher's message. He was indeed what Mr. Spur- 
geon has called him, " the most myriad-minded man 
since Shakespere ; " but his mind was always sur- 
charged with this one message. As a moral reformer 
the inspiration which stirred him and the hope which 
sustained him was that all men were Christ's men, 
and that in working for them he was working for 
Christ. As a lecturer — and, with the possible excep- 
tion of John B. Gough, he was the most popular 
lecturer in the United States — some phase of the 
kingdom of God, as a kingdom of love, was always 
his theme. He established in 1870 " The Christian 
Union " (now known as " The Outlook "), because 
he believed that Christianity was so much larger than 
denominationalism, that he wished an organ to present 
love in Christ, for Christ, and inspired by Christ as the 
bond which should bind men together and should in- 
spire them in all their religious activity. As a preacher 
his constant aim, to which he returned week after week 
with an always-increasing enthusiasm, was to impress 
on the hearts of men the truths that God is love, and 
that what love means, and therefore what God means, 
are questions answered by the life of Christ, the 
incarnate love because the incarnate Son of God. 
That the theology of the Puritan pulpits and with it 
the religion of the Puritans has been transformed 
from one of justice to one of love is due to many 



io Henry Ward Beecher. 

concurrent influences, but no one influence has been 
more potent than that which Mr. Beecher has exer- 
cised. 

His fifty years of gospel ministry were divided un- 
equally between three pastorates — Lawrenceburg, 
Indiana, 183 7-1 839 ; Indianapolis, Indiana, 1839- 
1847, and Brooklyn, New York, 1847-1887. The 
little church at Lawrenceburg with twenty members — 
a nineteen of them women and the other nothing " — 
in which Mr. Beecher performed the functions of 
both sexton and preacher, served as a test of the 
young preacher's endurance and a preparation for the 
larger parish in Indianapolis. This was the capital of 
the State ; to his church were soon drawn not only 
many of the leading men of the city, but a large con- 
gregation of politicians and their retainers. There he 
wrote and delivered those remarkable " Lectures to 
Young Men " which are a marvel of graphic dramatic 
description. There, too, he proved his power of per- 
sonal influence by getting acquainted with some of 
the foremost gamblers in the city and procuring 
directly from them the information which enabled 
him to make his pictures as realistic as they were 
graphic. " How could you describe a gambling-hell 
so accurately, Mr. Beecher, if you have never been in 
one?" said a would-be critic to him, when his lecture 
on gambling was the theme of universal discussion 
in the society of the capital. " How could you know 
it was accurate," was the ready rejoinder, " if you have 
never been in one ? " There, too, he began those 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 1 

studies of horticulture, and those contributions to hor- 
ticultural literature, which have been preserved in the 
little volume entitled " Flowers, Fruits, and Farming." 
His reading and writing served him the same purpose 
which the violin had served his father — as a means of 
shifting his thoughts from his sermon when the 
service was over. From Indianapolis he was called 
in 1847 t° ta ^ e tne pastorate of Plymouth Church in 
Brooklyn, of which he was the first pastor and with 
which he remained until the day of his death in 
March, 1887. Plymouth pulpit became at once a 
national platform; his sermons were reported far and 
wide, at first in brief and imperfect reports in the 
daily papers, subsequently fully in pamphlet publica- 
tions ; and the story of his life during those eventful 
years is the story of the Church and the Nation, the 
thought and life of which he did so much to form and 
guide. 

The limits within which such a sketch as this must 
be confined do not allow any history of that public 
life, and only the briefest analysis of his character 
and influence. His genius lay not so much in the 
predominance of any one characteristic as in the rare 
combination of characteristics quite different and 
indeed generally regarded as incongruous. He be- 
lieved that the imagination had a witness to bear to 
the truth and he listened to its message; but he 
always brought that message before the court of his 
reason to be tested. He believed in strong impulses, 
encouraged them in himself and developed them in 



12 Henry Ward Beecher. 

others ; but in impulses trained in the school of right- 
eousness and obedient to the law of love. He was 
impulsive but not lawless. His courage was absolute, 
and when he threw himself into a battle it was with 
all the impetuous valor of a Marshal Ney ; but he in- 
herited a caution and a conscience from his Puritan 
ancestry, and before he would declare himself on any 
issue he pondered it long and deeply and sought all 
possible light from all available quarters. He never 
broke with the past, and retained to the day of his death 
not only his formal ecclesiastical connection with the 
orthodox Congregational Church, but his warm per- 
sonal affection for the Puritan faith and character. 
But he never failed to keep pace with the advancing 
thought of his own age. He had a kind of prophetic 
instinct which enabled him to detect master-minds be- 
fore they had come to be publicly recognized ; was fa- 
miliar with both Herbert Spencer and Matthew Arnold 
before either was generally known in this country ; 
and was influential in introducing the writings of the 
former to American readers. He was probably the 
first of American divines to declare himself an evolu- 
tionist, and to use the theory of evolution in inter- 
preting Scripture and the laws of the spiritual life. 
He had a magnificent physique; but he never pre- 
sumed on it, and took as good care of his body as if 
it had been as fragile as it was robust. He was not 
what men call a scholar. He had as little equipment 
of other men's thoughts as any public man I have 
ever known ; but he was a student ; and his library 



Henry Ward Beecher. 13 

was alike rich in the oldest English classics and the 
latest products of scientific research and philosophic 
thought. He was profoundly in earnest; his wit and 
humor were the sparks which flew off from a soul 
heated to a red heat by its own internal intensity. 
He was reverent toward spiritual realities but not 
toward ecclesiastical forms. No one who ever 
heard him in prayer will forget the sacred and rever- 
ent familiarity of his converse with God. It has 
often been said that he would have made a great 
actor, but never by any one who really knew him ; for 
though his facial expression was remarkable and he 
was a natural mimic, he was absolutely incapable of 
sustaining a part. He was always himself, and 
equally himself in the parlor and on the platform. 
He could keep silent as effectively as General Grant 
if occasion required ; but he had not the ability to 
deceive. His frankness was at once his strength and 
his weakness. In him the sensitive purity of woman 
was mated to the broad sympathies of the old Eng- 
lish dramatists, making a contradiction which those 
who did not know him well could not understand. 
Above all, he was a Christian man and a Christian 
preacher, his whole life derived from Christ as the 
revelation of a God of love, his whole work the pro- 
clamation of that Christ-revealed God as the inspira- 
tion of a life of faith and hope and love. And all his 
faculties were consecrated to that ministry by a con- 
secration all the more effective that it was instructive 
and almost unconscious. Sermons are in the nature 



14 Henry Ward Beecher. 

of the case evanescent. They deal with eternal prin- 
ciples, but with the application of those principles to 
special and temporary needs. But long after Mr. 
Beecher's sermons are forgotten, or but rarely read, 
his influence will remain in American life, making it 
more hopeful and more charitable, endowing it with 
a truer because a more affectionate reverence for 
God, a larger and more enduring love for men, and a 
wiser and more courageous hope for that future 
which such a God has in store for his children. 

Lyman Abbott. 
Brooklyn, N. Y., September, 1893. 



BEST THOUGHTS 



OF 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



Now abideth these three : Faith, by which we see 
the glories of the eternal sphere ; Hope, by which we 
mount towards them ; and Love, by which we grasp 
and inherit them — therefore, the greatest of these is 
Love. 

Love, amid the other graces in this world, is like a 
cathedral tower, which begins on the earth, and at 
first is surrounded by the other parts of the structure ; 
but, at length, rising above buttressed wall, and arch, 
and parapet, and pinnacle, it shoots spire-like many a 
foot right into the air, so high that the huge cross on 
its summit glows like a spark in the morning light, 

15 



1 6 Best Thoughts of 

and shines like a star in the evening sky, when the 
rest of the pile is enveloped in darkness. So Love; 
here, is surrounded by the other graces, and divides 
the honors with them ; but they will have felt the wrap 
of night and of darkness when it will shine, luminous, 
against the sky of eternity. 



Many men want wealth — not a competence alone, 
but a five-story competence. Everything subserves 
this ; and religion they would like as a sort of light- 
ning rod to their houses, to ward off, by and by, the 
bolts of divine wrath. 



The way to begin a Christian life is not to study 
theology. Piety before theology. Right living will 
produce right thinking. Yet many men, when their 
consciences are aroused, run for catechisms, and com- 
mentaries, and systems. They do not mean to be 
shallow Christians. They intend to be thorough, if 
they enter upon the Christian life at all. Now, theol- 
ogies are well in their place ; but repentance and love 
must come before all other experiences. First a cure 
for your sin-sick soul, and then theologies. Suppose 
a man were taken with the cholera, and, instead of 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 7 

sending for a physician, he should send to a book- 
store, and buy all the books which have been written 
on the human system, and, while the disease was 
working in his vitals, he should say, " I'll not put 
myself in the hands of any of these doctors. I shall 
probe this thing to the bottom." 

Would it not be better for him first to be cured of 
the cholera ? 



If one should send me from abroad a richly carved 
and precious statue, and the careless drayman who ■ 
tipped it upon the sidewalk before my door should 
give it such a blow that one of the boards of the box 
should be wrenched off, I should be frightened lest 
the hurt had penetrated farther, and wounded it within. 
But if, taking off the remaining boards and the 
swathing-bands of straw or cotton, the statue should 
come out fair and unharmed, I should not mind the 
box, but should cast it carelessly into the street. 



Now, every man has committed to him a statue, 
moulded by the oldest master, not of Cupid, or 
Venus, or Psyche, or Jupiter, or Apollo, but the 
image of God ; and he who is only solicitous for 
outward things, who is striving to protect merely the 



1 8 Best Thoughts of 

body from injuries and reverses, is letting the statue 
go rolling away into the gutter, while he is picking up 
the fragments and lamenting the ruin of the box. 



A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath 
stuffed full of religious exercises, will make a good 
Pharisee, but a poor Christian. There are many per- 
sons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to 
wipe out the sins of the week. Now, God's altar 
stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day 
is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. 
The whole seven are for religion, and one of them 
for rest. 



All things in the natural world symbolize God, 
yet none of them speak of him but in broken and 
imperfect words. High above all he sits, sublimer 
than mountains, grander than storms, sweeter than 
blossoms and tender fruits, nobler than lords, truer 
than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet 
tread the lowest places of the earth ; but his head is 
above all glory, and every where he is supreme. 



You might as weil go to the catacombs of Egypt 



Henry Ward Becclier. 19 

and scrape up the dust of the mummies, and knead it 
into forms, and bake them in your oven, and call 
such things men, and present them, as citizens and 
teachers, for our regard, as to bring old, time-worn 
institutions to serve the growth and the living wants 
of to-day. 



*Wiiat cares the child when the mother rocks it, 
though all storms beat without ? So we, if God doth 
shield and tend us, shall be heedless of the tempests 
and blasts of life, blow they never so rudely. 



Every man feels, and not strangely, that there 
never were such experiences of life as his own. No 
joy was ever like our joy, no sorrow ever like our 
sorrow. Indeed, there is a kind of indignation ex- 
cited in us when one likens our grief to his own. 
The soul is jealous of its experiences, and does not 
like pride to be humbled by the thought that they are 
common. For, though we know that the world 
groans and travails in pain, and has done so for ages, 
yet a groan heard by our ear is a very different thing 

* In church, one rainy Sabbath morning. 



20 Best Thoughts of 

from a groan uttered by our mouth. The sorrows of 
other men seem to us like clouds of rain that empty 
themselves in the distance, and whose long-travelling 
thunder comes to us mellowed and subdued ; but our 
own troubles are like a storm bursting right over- 
head, and sending down its bolts upon us with direct 
plunge. 

But there have been human hearts, constituted just 
like ours, for six thousand years. The same stars rise 
and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of 
Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile; and the same 
sorrows rise andjfeet in every age. All that sickness 
can do, all that disappointment can effect, all that 
blighted love, disappointed ambition, thwarted hope, 
ever did, they do still. Not a tear is wrung from 
eyes now, that, for the same reason, has not been 
wept over and over again in long succession since the 
hour that the fated pair stepped from paradise, and 
gave their posterity to a world of sorrow and suffer- 
ing. The head learns new things, but the heart 
forevermore practises old experiences. Therefore our 
life is but a new form of the way men have lived from 
the beginning. 

When the landsman first goes down upon the deep, 
to see what storm-ploughing means, what furrows the 
wind draws, seedless and unplanted, he feels in every 
shivering nerve that never was such storm known 



Henry Ward Beecher. 21 

before. Now, he bethinks himself with horror, there 
has come upon the deep a fury never till then let 
loose. But the clouds laugh, and the winds know, 
that ten thousand times before they have terrified just 
such inexperienced wretches. Yea, long ere a ship 
dared the central ocean, storms had navigated it, nor 
failed to pursue their dreadful sport ever since a keel 
crossed the perilous deep. 

Not only are such experiences the hereditary legacy 
of men, rolled over and over, and sent down in suc- 
cession upon every generation, but the methods by 
which men have met and conquered trouble, or been 
slain by it, are the same in every age. Some have 
floated on the sea, and trouble carried them on its 
surface as the sea carries cork. Some have sunk at 
once to the bottom as foundering ships sink. Some 
have run away from their own thoughts. Some have 
coiled themselves up into a stoical indifference. Some 
have braved the trouble, and defied it. Some have 
carried it as a tree does a wound, until by new wood 
it can overgrow and cover the old gash. A few in 
every age have known the divine art of carrying 
sorrow and trouble as wonderful food ; as an invisible 
garment that clothed them with strength ; as a mys- 
terious joy, so that they suffered gladly ; rejoicing in 
infirmity, and, holding up their heads with sacred 
presages whenever times were dark and troubled, let 



22 Best Thoughts of 

the light depart from their eyes, that they might by 
faith see nobler things than sight could reach. 

The most affecting records of literature are those 
which repeat to us the sacred joy of souls in trial — 
their victory, and the causes of it. Job says : " Though 
He slay me, yet will I trust in him." Moses "en- 
dured as seeing Him who is invisible." Isaiah had 
sounded forth, " The wilderness and the solitary place 
shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and 
blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, 
and rejoice even with joy and singing ; the glory of 
Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of 
Carmel and Sharon ; they shall see the glory of the 
Lord, and the excellency of our God. . . . And 
the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to 
Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads ; 
they shall obtain- joy and gladness, and sorrow and 
sighing shall flee away." 

David has left no sweeter psalm than the short 
twenty-third. It is but a moment's opening of his 
soul ; but — as when one, walking the winter street, 
sees the door opened for some one to enter, and the 
red light streams a moment forth, and the forms of 
gay children are running to greet the comer, and 
genial music sounds, though the door shuts and leaves 
the night black, yet it cannot shut back again all that 
the eye, the ear, the heart, and the imagination have 



Henry Ward Beecher* 23 

seen — so in this psalm, though it is but a moment's 
opening of the soul, are emitted truths of peace 
and consolation that will never be absent from the 
world. 

The twenty-third psalm is the nightingale of the 
psalms. It is small, of a homely feather, singing shyly 
out of obscurity ; but, Oh, it has rilled the air of the 
whole world with melodious joy, greater than the heart 
can conceive. Blessed be the day on which that psalm 
was born ! 

What would you say of a pilgrim commissioned of 
God to travel up and down the earth singing a strange 
melody, which, when one heard, caused him to forget 
whatever sorrow he had ? And so the singing angel 
goes on his way through all lands, singing in the lan- 
guage of every nation, driving away trouble by the 
pulses of the air which his tongue moves with divine 
power. Behold just such an one ! This pilgrim God 
has sent to speak in every language on the globe. It 
has charmed more griefs to rest than all the philosophy 
of the world. It has remanded to their dungeon more 
felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sor- 
rows, than there are sands on the sea shore. It has 
comforted the noble host of the poor. It has sung 
courage to the army of the disappointed. It has poured 
balm and consolation into the heart of the sick, of 
captives in dungeons, of widows in their pinching griefs, 



24 Best Thoughts of 

of orphans in their loneliness. Dying soldiers have 
died easier as it was read to them ; ghastly hospitals 
have been illumined ; it has visited the prisoner and 
broken his chains, and, like Peter's angel, led him forth 
in imagination, and sung him back to his home again. 
It has made the dying Christian slave freer than his 
master, and consoled those whom, dying, he left behind 
mourning, not so much that he was gone as because 
they were left behind, and could not go too. Nor is 
its work done. It will go singing to your children 
and my children, and to their children, through all the 
generations of time ; nor will it fold its wings till the 
last pilgrim is safe, and time ended ; and then it shall 
fly back to the bosom of God, whence it issued, and 
sound on, mingled with all those sounds of celestial 
joy which make heaven musical forever. 



O impatient ones ! Did the leaves say nothing to 
you as they murmured, when you came hither to-day? 
They were not created this spring, but months ago ; 
and the summer just begun will fashion others for 
another year. At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a 
cradle, and in it is an infant germ ; and the winds will 
rock it, and the birds will sing to it all summer long, 
and next season it will unfold. So God is working 



Henry Ward Beecher. 25 

for you, and carrying forward to the perfect develop- 
ment all the processes of your lives. 



You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with 
the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it ; and yet 
it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. 
So many a soul sways towards heaven, but cannot as- 
cend thither because it is anchored to some secret 
sin. 



Men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrations 
and lightning-strokes; but if they were building a wharf 
in Panama, millions of teredos, so small that only the 
microscope could detect them, would begin to bore 
the piles down under the water. There would be 
neither noise nor foam ; but in a little while, if a child 
did but touch the post, over it would fall as if a saw 
had cut it through. 

Now, men think, with regard to their conduct, that, 
if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and com- 
mit some crashing sin, they should never be able to 
hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls 
little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to 
inevitable ruin, 



26 Best Thoughts of 

u If any man will come after me, let him deny him- 
self, and take up his cross and follow me." 

This is only one meaning of religion. If I should 
say of a garden, "It is a place fenced in," what idea 
would you have of its clusters of roses, and pyramids 
of honeysuckles, and beds of odorous flowers, and rows 
of blossoming shrubs and fruit-bearing trees ? If I 
should say of a cathedral, "It is built of stone, cold 
stone," what idea would you have of its wondrous carv- 
ings, and its gorgeous openings for door and window, 
and its evanishing spire ? Now, if you regard religion 
merely as self-denial, you stop at the fence, and see 
nothing of the pleasantness of the garden ; you think 
only of the stone, and not of the marvellous beauty 
into which it is fashioned. 



One might as well attempt to calculate mathematic- 
ally the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass 
in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the 
future and foretell its pattern. 



We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the 
pattern which was weaving when the sun went down 
is weaving when it gomes up to-morrow. 



Henry Ward Beecher, 27 

Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven 
through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, 
who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the 
mainmast, but never touch the helm. 



Our best actions are often those of which we are 
unconscious ; but this can never be unless we are 
always yearning to do good. 

In my garden at the West, I used sometimes to 
notice that the finest heads of lettuce were not in 
the beds, but on some southern ridge, where they 
had chanced to grow. It seemed as though random 
seeds always did the best, from a kind of wild emu- 
lation ; but they never grew without the sowing, and 
the chance-sown seed was never wild. 

If you shake the tree, you can bring down fruit, 
no doubt ; but I remember, when a boy, the persua- 
sion to get early out of bed was the thought of the 
large white apples that lay beneath the trees, await- 
ing the first comer — that had dropped upon the 
grass in the silent night, almost without a breath 
of wind to stir the branches. Now I think every 
man ought to carry his boughs so full of fruits, that, 
like the apples which drop from silent dew, they will 
fall by the weight of their own ripeness for whoever 
needs to be refreshed. We should go home to the 



28 Best Thoughts of 

threshing-floor like a great harvest-wagon full of 
sheaves, which at every jolt casts down ears for the 
gleaners and stray seeds for the birds, and now and 
then a chance handful, which, blown by winds into 
nooks and corners, comes up to grow and to bless 
another generation. 



He who is false to present duty breaks a thread 
in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may 
have forgotten its cause. 



When I was in the galleries of Oxford, I saw 
many of the designs of Raphael and Michael An- 
gelo. I looked upon them with reverence, and took 
up such of them as I was permitted to touch as one 
would take up a love-token. It seemed to me these 
sketches brought me nearer the great masters than 
their finished pictures could have done, because 
therein I saw the minds' processes as they were first 
born. They were the first salient points of the in- 
spiration. Could I have brought them home with 
me, how rich I should have been — how envied for 
their possession ! Now, there are open and free to 
us, every day of our lives, the designs of a Greater 
than Raphael or Michael Angelo, God, of whom 



Henry Ward Beecher. 29 

the noblest master is but a feeble imitator, is sketch- 
ing and painting every hour the most wondrous 
pictures — not hoarded in any gallery, but spread in 
light and shadow round the whole earth, and glowing 
for us in the overhanging skies. 



What if the parent bird should sit, nervous and 
fluttering, upon the bough, when the young ones 
were hatching, and mourn because its beautiful egg- 
shells were being broken ? 

Yet this is what we do. We have joys and truths, 
deep as eternity, committed to us in the egg-form, 
and the shell must needs be chipped before they can 
be born, and fly, full-fledged, swinging, towards the 
gate of heaven. Yet we grieve and fear, and cling 
still to the undeveloped egg. 



If a man is odious in society, he might as well 
be in prison. The worst prisons are not of stone ; 
they are of throbbing hearts, outraged by an infa- 
mous life. 



There are many people in this world who are like 
perfumed vases from which the perfume has fled, all 



30 Best Thoughts of 

the surrounding objects attracting it ; and so their 
life is not in themselves, but in their things. 



It is often said it is no matter what a man believes 
if he is only sincere. This is true of all minor 
truths, and false of all truths whose nature it is to 
fashion a man's life. It will make no difference in 
a man's harvest whether he think turnips have more 
saccharine matter than potatoes — whether corn is 
better that wheat. But let the man sincerely believe 
that seed planted without ploughing is as good as 
with, that January is as favorable for seed-sowing as 
April, and that cockle-seed will produce as good a 
harvest as wheat, and will it make no difference ? 
A child might as well think he could reverse that 
ponderous marine engine which, night and day, in 
calm and storm, ploughs its way across the deep, by 
sincerely taking hold of the paddle-wheel, as a man 
might think he could revejrse the action of the 
elements of God's moral government through a mis- 
guided sincerity. They will roll over such an one 
and whelm him in endless ruin. 



They are not reformers who simply abhor evil. 
Such men become in the end abhorrent themselves. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 3 1 

Sometimes men who have been frankly wicked 
attempt to reform, and become locked-up hypocrites. 



One man's heart beating against yours may be little 
to you ; but when it is the echo of a thousand hearts, 
you cannot resist it. A single snow-flake — who cares 
for it ? But a whole day of snowflakes, obliterating 
the landmarks, drifting over the doors, gathering upon 
the mountains to crash in avalanches — who does not 
care for that ? Private opinion is weak, but public 
opinion is almost omnipotent. 



Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad 
where they touch the ground, but grow narrower as 
they reach the sky. 



People say, " How fortunate it is that things have 
turned out just as they have — that I was prepared 
for this ! " As if God did not arrange the whole ! 
One might as well say, " How fortunate it is that I 
have a neck beneath my head, and shoulders under 
my neck ! " 



32 Best Thoughts of 

No man need fear that he will exhaust his sub- 
stance of thought, if he will only draw his inspiration 
from actual human life. There the inexhaustible God 
pours depths and endless variety of truth ; and the 
true thinker is but a short-hand writer endeavoring to 
report the discourse of God. Shall a child on the 
banks of the Amazon fear lest he should drink up the 
stream ? 



There are apartments in the soul which have a 
glorious outlook ; from whose windows you can see 
across the river of death and into the shining city 
beyond ; but how often are these neglected for the 
lower ones, which have earthward-looking windows ! 
There is the apartment of Veneration. Its ceilings 
are frescoed with angels, and all exquisite carvings 
adorn its walls ; but spiders have covered the angel 
ceiling, and dust has settled on the delicate mouldings. 
The man does not abide there. The door of Con- 
science is rusted so it cannot be opened. Hope has 
but one downward-looking window, and Faith and 
Worship are cold and cheerless. All these are shut 
up in most soul-houses. In lower apartments you 
shall hear, in some riot and wassail, — for the passions 
never keep lent, but are always holding carnival, — 
and in others sighs and lamentations of wounded 



Henry Ward Beec her. 33 

hopes, and in others the groanings of disappointed 
ambition, and in others bickerings and strifes, while 
in others there are sleep and stupidity. 

Ah ! most men live in these wretched apartments, 
and never mount to those airy ones where they can 
hold commerce with God and angels. Now Christ 
comes to light up the house from foundation to roof- 
tree with the glory of God. He knocks at the door, 
and, when it is opened to him, he enters, and gives 
to every room order, and beauty, and the voice of 
song, and a wondrous fragrance from his robes, 
which have borrowed smell of every flower that grows 
in the celestial gardens. Who will open the door ? 



In this world, it is not what we take up, but what 
we give up, that makes us rich. 



When a man unites with the church, he should not 
come saying, " I am so holy that I think I must go 
in among the saints," but, " O brethren, I find I am 
so weak and wicked that I cannot stand alone ; so, if 
you can help me, open the door and let me enter." 



Amid the discords of this life, it is bl'essed to think 



34 Best Thoughts of 

of heaven, where God draws after him an everlasting 
train of music ; for all thoughts are harmonious and 
all feelings vocal, and so there is round about his feet 
eternal melody. 



Many of our churches defy Protestantism. Grand 
cathedrals are they, which make us shiver as we enter 
them. The windows are so constructed as to exclude 
the light and inspire a religious awe. The walls are 
of stone, making us think of our last home. The 
ceilings are sombre, and the pews coffin-colored. 
Then the services are composed to these circum- 
stances, and hushed music goes trembling along the 
aisles, and men move softly, and would on no account 
put on their hats before they reach the door ; but 
when they do, they take a long breath, and have such 
a sense of relief to be in the free air, and comfort 
themselves with the thought that they have been good 
Christians ! 

Now, this idea of worship is narrow and false. The 
house of God should be a joyous place for the right 
use of all our faculties. 

I had rather see a congregation laugh, when it is a 
sign of life in them, than to see them asleep under, 
appropriately called, sound sermons. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 35 

A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it, else 
the hand would cut itself which sought to drive it 
home upon another. The worst lies, therefore, are 
those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true 



Those who exalt sentimental religion, and ignore 
practical, ethical life, are like men who would improve 
ship architecture by cutting away the hull till it is no 
larger than a shingle, and spreading the sails till they 
are as big as the whole harbor. Every leaf must have 
a root which goes deep into the ground, and every 
sentimental blossom must have an ethical support. 



In this world, full often, our joys are only the 
tender shadows which our sorrows cast. 



The cares and infelicities of life, which are spoken 
of as "hinderances to grace," may be hinderances, 
but they are the only helps it has in this world. The 
voice of provocation is the voice of God calling us to 
the practice of patience. 

A man in old age is like a sword in a shop window. 
Men that look upon the perfect blade do not imagine 
the process by which it was completed. Man is a 



30 Best Thoughts of 

sword. Dauy life is the workshop, and God is the 
artificer, and those cares which beat him upon the 
anvil, and file his edge, and eat in, acid-like, the 
inscription upon his hilt, — these are the very things 
that fashion the man. 



The call to religion is not a call to be better than 
your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion 
is relative to the individual. 



Many professing Christians are like railroad station- 
houses, and the wicked are whirled indifferently by 
them, and go on their way forgetting them ; whereas 
they should be like switches, taking sinners off one 
track and putting them on to another. 



There ought to be such an atmosphere in every 
Christian church that a man going there and sitting 
two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and 
carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came. 



Many persons come to the right point in conver- 
sion, but they never shove off. . I question them 



Henry Ward Beecher. 3;- 

about their state, and I find all as it should be; bu. 
they are waiting for something, they know not whaj 
—standing still in thought and feeling. 

If you wind up the weights of a clock, and point 
the hands to the proper figures, and go away, you will 
find them in the same place when you return an hour 
after. Set it again, and an hour later it will be as you 
left it. What docs it need ? It needs to have the 
pendulum swing, and then it will keep time. Now, I 
am continually setting Christians ; and when I look 
again, I find them just where I left them. What al! 
such need is to swing the pendulum of active duties, 
and life expression of thoughts and feelings. Your 
hearts must be always ticking, if you would have then 
keep time with the sun of righteousness. 



A man will confess sins in general ; but those sins 
which he would not have his neighbor know for his 
right hand, which bow him down with shame like a 
wind-stricken bulrush, those he passes over in his 
prayer. Men are willing to be thought sinful in dis- 
position; but in special acts they are disposed to 
praise themselves. They therefore confess their de- 
pravity and defend their conduct. They are wrong 
in general, but right in particular. 



38 Best Thoughts of 

I think the wickedest people on earth are those 
who use a force of genius to make themselves selfish 
in the noblest things ; keeping themselves aloof from 
the vulgar, and the ignorant, and the unknown ; rising 
higher and higher in taste, till they sit, ice upon ice, 
on the mountain-top of eternal congelation. 

Now, as we ascend the hills of improvement, those 
who are poor and needy are not to hear our voices 
chanting ever farther and farther in the distance. 
No ! by our singing we are to win others upward to 
the same heights to which we aspire. 



The superfluous blossoms on a fruit-tree are meant 
to symbolize the large way in which God loves to do 
pleasant things. 



When my blood flows like wine, when all is ease 
and prosperity, when the sky is blue, and birds sing, 
and flowers blossom, and my life is an anthem moving 
in time and tune, — then this world's joy and affection 
suffice. But when a change comes, when I am weary 
and dissapointed, when the skies lower into the 
sombre night, when there is no song of bird, and the 
perfume of flowers is but their dying breath, when all 
is sunsetting and autumn, then I yearn for Him who 



Henry Ward Beec her, 39 

sits with the summer of love in his soul, and feel that 
all earthly affection is but a glow-worm light com- 
pared to that which blazes with such effulgence in the 
heart of God. 



I think half the troubles for which men go slouch- 
ing in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable 
pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of 
looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get 
mouldy, and then call them curses. 



If you wished to look at a portrait of Raphael's, 
what would you think to see only the forehead un- 
covered, and then only the eyes, and so on, until all 
the features had been separately seen ? Could you 
gain a true idea of the picture as a whole ? Yet this 
is the way men look at the picture of Christ in the 
Gospels, reading a few verses and mottoes here and 
there, and never considering the life in its wholeness 
and harmony. 



You are to accept as a Christian every one whose 
lrife and disposition are Christ-like, no matter how 



40 Best Thoughts of 

heretical the denomination may be to which he be- 
longs. 

Wherever you find faith, and righteousness, and 
love, and joy in the Holy Ghost, you are to look 
upon them as the stamped -coin of Christ's kingdom, 
and as a legal tender from God to you. 



I have heard men teach that God has a right to 
glorify himself, and to appropriate everything to 
his own delight — a doctrine which is shocking, and 
which represents him as living in almighty selfishness. 
Can we believe that he sits, self-poised, in eternity, 
admiring his own perfections and singing his own 
joys, when, against this, with regard to man, the 
whole Bible fulminates? 



It is neither the vote nor the laying on of hands 
that gives men the right to preach. One's own 
heart is authority. If one wishes to, and can, let 
him, though all church courts forbid. If he cannot 
preach to edification, he is not authorized, though all 
the ministers in Christendom ordain him. Any one 
who has a bell in him, that, ringing, will ring with 
" Holiness to the Lord " is a preacher, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 4 1 

Astronomers have built telescopes which can 
show myriads of stars unseen before ; but when a 
man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a 
lens which reaches in the unknown, and reveals 
orbs which no telescope, however skilfully con- 
structed, could do : nay, which brings to view even 
the throne of God, and pierces that nebulous dis- 
tance where are those eternal verities in which true 
life consists. 



When the church is cold and dead, those hymns 
which were written by God's saints in moments of 
rapture seem extravagant, and we walk over them 
on dainty footsteps of taste ; but let God's spirit 
come down upon our hearts, and they arc as sweet- 
ness on our tongues: nay, all too poor and meagre 
for our emotions; for feeling is always tropical, and 
seeks the most intense and fervid expression. 



Going into a village at night, with the lights 
gleaming on each side of the street, in some houses 
they will be in the basement and nowhere else, and 
in others in the attic and nowhere else, and in others 
in some middle chamber; but in no house will every 
window gleam from top to bottom. So is it with 



42 Best Thoughts of 

men's faculties. Most of them are in darkness. 
One shines here, and another there ; but there is no 
man whose soul is luminous throughout. 



The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, 
but for the wide world's joy. The lonely pine on 
the mountain-top waves its sombre boughs and cries, 
"Thou art my sun !" And the little meadow violet 
lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its perfumed 
breath, " Thou art my sun ! " And the grain in a 
thousand fields rustles in the wind, and makes answer, 
"Thou art my sun !" 

So God sits, effulgent, in heaven, not for a favored 
few, but for the universe of life; and there is no 
creature so poor or so low that he may not look up 
with childlike confidence and say, " My Father ! thou 
art mine ! " 



The man who carries a lantern in a dark night can 
have friends all around him, walking safely by the 
help of its rays, and he not defrauded. So he who 
has the God-given light of hope in his breast can 
help on many others in this world's darkness, not to 
his own loss, but to their precious gain. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 43 

The abettors of slavery are weaving the thread in 
the loom, but God is adjusting the pattern. They 
arc asses harnessed to the chariot of Liberty, and, 
whether they will or no, must draw it on. 



The fact that a nation is growing is God's own 



charter of change. 



You never can have congregational singing, if that 
is all you have. Unless you have singing in the 
family and singing in the house, singing in the shop 
and singing in the street, singing everywhere, until it 
becomes a habit, you never can have congregational - 
singing. It will be like the cold drops, half water, 
half ice, which drip in March from some cleft of a 
rock, one drop here and another there ; whereas it 
should be like the August shower, which comes ten 
million drops at once, and roars on the roof. 

I like to see people sing when they have to stop in 
the middle of the verse and cry a little. I like such 
unwritten rests and pauses in the music. 

When hymns come to the house of God all redolent 
of home associations, then singing will be what it 
ought to be — social Christian worship. 



44 Best Thoughts of 

A helping word to one in trouble is often like 
a switch on a railroad track — but one inch between 
wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity. 



Many men carry their conscience like a drawn 
sword, cutting this way and that, in the world, but 
sheathe it, and keep it very soft and quiet, when it 
is turned within, thinking that a sword should not be 
allowed to cut its own scabbard. 



Every loving word that God speaks to us acts back 
again, and makes music in his heart. He never says, 
with a scowl, " Here comes that poor, limping sinner 
again." The path of the sinner back to God is 
brighter and brighter all the way up to the smile of 
the face and the touch of the hand; and that is 
salvation. > 



God builds for every sinner, if he will but come 
back, a highway of golden promises from the depths 
of degradation and sin clear up to the Father's 
house. 



* Henry Ward Beecher. 45 

No experience will ever reveal to us what changes 
are yet to come to us, or what new growth or pruning 
we shall have. 

We know not what a day will bring forth. We 
can become familiar with a landscape ; we know 
where to find the waterfall and the shady ledge, where 
the violets grow in spring and the sassafras gives forth 
its odor ; but we never can become familiar with our 
life-landscape ; we never can tell where we shall come 
upon the shady dell, or where the fountains will gush 
and the birds sing. That is with God. 



God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offence 
into everlasting forgetfulness. 



Raphael did well, and Phidias did well; but it is 
not painter or sculptor who is making himself most 
nobly immortal. It is he who is making true impres- 
sions upon the mind of man; frescoes for eternity, 
tnat will not shine out till the light of heaven reveals 
them; sculptures, not wrought in outward things, but 
in the inward nature and character of the soul. 



Our children that die young are like those spring 



46 Best Thoughts of 

bulbs which have their flowers prepared beforehand, 
and have nothing to do but to break ground, and 
blossom, and pass away. Thank God for spring 
flowers among men, as well as among the grasses of 
the field. 



A Christianity which will not kelp those who are 
struggling from the bottom to the top of society 
needs another Christ to die for it. 



Men plant prayers and endeavors, and go the next 
day looking to see if they have borne graces. Now, 
God does not send graces as he sends light and rain, 
but they are wrought in us through long days of 
discipline and growth. Acorns and graces sprout 
quickly, but grow long before ripening. - 



If any of you should die to-day, could you say to 
God, "Lord, here is my life-work. Thou didst send 
me into life with a handful of seeds, and here is my 
heart, like a garden, full of flowers " ? 



The clearest window that was ever fashioned, if it 



Henry Ward Beecher. 47 

is barred by spider's webs, and hung over with car- 
casses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to 
find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, 
the church is God's window; and if it is so obscured 
by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that 
darkness ! 



If we are the Lord's, we need not fear to see our 
treasures disappear, to have the cradle become empty, 
and friend after friend fall away ; for father, and 
mother, and brother, and sister, and husband, and wife, 
and child are but sparks struck out from God — glow- 
ing names which, grouped together, mean God. So 
let us take our dear ones and enshrine them in him, 
and place them in that crystal sphere where loss can 
never come. 



The mother's heart is the child's school-room. 



We are bound to be the almoners of God's bounty 
— not tax-gatherers, to take away what little others 
have. As a father stands in the midst of his house- 
hold, and says, "What is best for my children?" so we 
are to stand in the world, and say, "What is best for 
my brotherhood?" 



48 Best Thoughts of 

We say a man is "made." What do we mean? 
That he has got the control of his lower instincts, so' 
that they are only fuel to his higher feelings, giving 
force to his nature ? That his affections are like vines, 
sending out on all sides blossoms and clustering fruits? 
That his tastes are so cultivated that all beautiful 
things speak to him, and bring him their delights ? 
That his understanding is opened, so that he walks 
through every hall of knowledge, and gathers its treas- 
ures ? That his moral feelings are so developed and 
quickened that he holds sweet commerce with Heaven? 
O no — none of these things ! He is cold and dead in 
heart, and mind, and soul. Only his passions are alive; 
but — he is worth five hundred thousand dollars ! 

And we say a man is " ruined." Are his wife and 
children dead ? O no ! Have they had a quarrel, and 
are they separted from him ? O no ! Has he lost his 
reputation through crime ? No. Is his reason gone ? 
O no; it is as sound as ever! Is he struck through 
with disease ? No. He has lost his property, and he 
is ruined. The man ruined ! When shall we learn that 
" a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth"? 



A man, in this world, is a boy spelling in short syl- 
lables ; but he will combine them in the next. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 49 

Earthly love is a brief and penurious stream, which 
only flows in spring, with a long summer drought. The 
change from a burning desert, treeless, springless, drear,, 
to green fields and blooming orchards in June, is slight 
in comparison with that from the desert of this world's 
affection to the garden of God, where there is per- 
petual, tropical luxuriance of blessed love. 



Defeat is a school in which Truth always grows 
strong. 



My best presentations of the Gospel to you are so 
incomplete ! Sometimes, when I am alone, I have 
such sweet and rapturous visions of the love of God 
and the truths of his word, that I think, if I could speak 
to you then, I should move your hearts. I am like a 
child, who, walking forth some sunny summer's morn- 
ing, sees grass and flower all shining with drops of dew. 
" O," he cries, " I'll carry these beautiful things to my 
mother !" And, eagerly plucking them, the dew drops 
into his little palm, and all the charm is gone. There 
is but grass in his hand, and no longer pearls. 



In our own strength we can do nothing. Who is 
there that is not tired of climbing up the black face of 



50 Best Thoughts of 

the cliff of Resolution, to fall back again, day after 
day, upon the shore ? They who gain their subsistence 
by searching for nests along dangerous heights search 
with their waists girdled with a cord let down from 
above, that, if they slip, they shall not fall and be lost. 
We need God's golden cords and bands of promises, 
reaching from heaven, to enable us to defy stumbling 
or downfall. "Cast down, but not destroyed." 



Success is full of promise till men get it ; and then 
it is a last year's nest, from which the bird has flown. 



No man can go down into the dungeon of his ex- 
perience, and hold the torch of God's words to all its 
dark chambers, and hidden cavities, and slimy recesses, 
and not come up with a shudder and a chill, and an 
earnest cry to God for divine mercy and cleansing. 



The most miserable pettifogging in the world is 
that of a man in the court of his own conscience. 



A man in the right, with God on his side, is in the 
majority, though he be alone; for God is multitudinous 
above all populations of the earth. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 5 1 

Men think religion bears the same relation to life 
that flowers do to trees. The tree must grow 
through a long period before the blossoming time ; 
so they think religion is to be a blossom just before 
death, to secure heaven. But the Bible 'represents 
religion, not as the latest fruit of life, but as the 
whole of it — beginning, middle, and end. It is 
simply right living. 



Great pow T ers and natural gifts do not bring 
privileges to their possessor so much as they bring 
duties. 



God designed men to grow as trees grow in open 
pastures, full-boughed all around; but men in so- 
ciety grow like trees in forests, tall and spindling, 
the lower ones overshadowed by the higher, with 
only a little branching, and that at the top. They 
borrow of each other the power to stand ; and if 
the forest be cleared and one be left alone, the first 
wind which comes uproots it. 



We go to the grave of a friend, saying, " A man 
is dead;" but angels throng about him, saying, 
" A man is born." 



52 Best Thoughts of 

The German Protestant declared, " I have rights 
as against the church." The Puritan Protestant 
declared, " I have rights as against government." 
The Independent or Congregational Protestant de- 
clared, " I have rights as against civil governments, 
church governments, and all mankind. Neither 
the multitudes nor the organized few can take from 
me what God gave, and I will preserve." These 
were the three great strides which landed on Plym- 
outh Rock. 



When your mind and heart are in such a state 
that praying is pushing a prayer through, like driving 
a wedge into a log, do you call it religion ? It is 
as when your child, red-faced and choking with pas- 
sion, is held up by the servant to kiss you. He 
comes because he is pushed ; and do you call that 
love ? 



Whether they shall confess their faults or not, 
men generally leave to their moods, and not to their 
principles. 



For four thousand years the strong had been 
rushing on in the road of privilege and power, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 53 

seeking greatness. Christ stood in the path, and 
said, " Ye seek greatness. Ye are not even in the 
way to it. Ye are going up, but the way to great- 
ness is down. Let him who would be great be the 
love-servant of all." Greatness consists in the fa- 
cility and power of going down, and not in the 
facility of going up. 



A man ought to carry himself in the world as 
an orange-tree would if it could walk up and down 
in the garden— swinging perfume from every little 
censer it holds up to the air. 



Wherever Presbyterianism has existed, it has 
always been found a strong defender of liberty. 
Wherever Congregationalism has existed, it has 
always been the propagator of liberty. The one 
builds granaries ; and no rat nor mouse shall nib- 
ble the wheat there. The other throws the store- 
house doors wide open, and saying, " The field is 
the world," it scatters the grain broadcast over the 
earth. 

Presbyterianism has been a port in which liberty 
has taken refuge ; a bulwark, behind which it has 
been protected. Congregationalism is an army, 



54 Best Thoughts of 

well equipped and disciplined, bearing right down 
on the enemy and taking possession of new territory. 

How many hopes have quivered for us in past 
years — have flashed like harmless lightnings in 
summer nights, and died forever ! 

Memory can glean, but can never renew. It 
brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, 
faded and dried, of the summer that is gone. 



The Puritan ideas were not seen to be of much 
value when they were first made known. They were 
like lands left by a father to infant children, which, 
when the children are of age, have become so valu- 
able as to enrich them all. When the Puritan died, 
the property had not appreciated ; but since then it 
has risen in value so that we have built this nation 
with it ; and still it has not run out. 



There are many troubles which you cannot cure 
by the Bible and the Hymn Book, but which you 
can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of 
fresh air. 



There is no system which equals Calvinism in 



Henry Ward Beecher. 55 

intensifying, to the last degree, ideas of moral excel- 
lence and purity of character. There never was a 
system since the world stood which puts upon man 
such motives to holiness, or which builds batteries 
that sweep the whole ground of sin with such hor- 
rible artillery. In its tendency to create strong 
individualism, which is the foundation of liberty, 
and to make men let each other alone, and say, 
" Stand back ! the man is striving for his soul ; 
put no obstacle in his way,"— in both these direc- 
tions Calvinism has always worked for liberty. 



We look down at our fellows as the eagle looks 
over the edge of the cliff at the mice which crawl so 
far below him. This is the selfishness of the moral 
nature. Our gifts and attainments are not only to be 
light and warmth in our own dwellings, but are as 
well to shine through the window, into the dark night, 
to guide and cheer bewildered travellers upon the 
road. 



We ought to love life ; we ought to desire to live 
here so long as God ordains it ; but let us not so 
encase ourselves in time that we cannot break the 
crust and begin to throw out shoots for the other life. 

As it is only now and then that we have a landslide, 



56 Best Thoughts of 

1 
while we are continually annoyed by the dust which 

sifts in at every crack, and door, and window, so it is 

only now and then that we have a crashing trouble, 

while we are perpetually annoyed by little daily cares 

and vexations. 



i^et it be understood that the end of our existence 
here is that we may be more God-like ; and may we 
know that we shall become so by being more manly 
in the world, and that we are placed here to grow 
strong and noble, and not merely to enjoy. 



The most dangerous infidelity of the day Is the 
infidelity of rich and orthodox churches. 



In the earlier ages of New England, the state was 
nothing but Congregationalism in civil affairs, and 
the church was nothing but republicanism carried into 
religious affairs. They reflected each other. 

New Englandism is but another word for Puri- 
tanism in the Independent sense, and that is but 
another word for New Testamentism. 



Every Saturday evening has to my ear a gentle 
knell. The week tolls itself away ; the first, second, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 5;? 

third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and the perfect seventh, and 
I can almost hear them beating a melodious measure 
as they recede. . 

Time does not end™ 11 at once. It is ending, in 
part, every day, and hour, and moment. And when 
the angel shall lift up his hand, and swear by Him 
who liveth forever that it shall be no longer, the 
years which are past will not then have ended more 
than now. 



In the morning, we carry the world, like Atlas ; at 
noon, we stoop and bend beneath it ; and at night, it 
crushes us flat to the ground. 



God's word is sometimes to us like a magic writing 
which has faded out and become invisible, v and then, 
at other times, the lines reappear, and it flashes for 
us with a divine meaning. 



You need not break the glasses of a telescope, or 
coat them over with paint, in order to prevent you 
from seeing through them. Just breathe upon them, 
and the dew of your breath will shut out all the stars. 
So it does not require great crimes to hide the light 
of God's countenance. Little faults can do it just as 
well. Take a shield, and cast a spear upon it, and it 



58 Best Thoughts of 

will leave in it one great dent. Prick it all over with 
a million little needle-shafts, and they will take the 
polish from it far more than the piercing of the spear, 
So it is not so much the grem sins which take the 
freshness from our consciences as the numberless 
petty faults which we are all the while committing. 



History is a mighty, thundering declaration of the 
falsity of the sentiment that God is not a God who 
will let men suffer. The history of the world is all 
suffering. 



If I am working beside a man, and I see that he 
tries to shirk and shift his labor upon me, I am angry 
with him. But if he says to me, " I am wounded, 
and cannot work," or, " I am lame," or " sick," then 
the thought comes to me at once, " You shall not 
work ; I will help you." And so if a man says to us, 
" I know I did wrong ; but I am weak. Blame me 
as little as you can, but help me as much as you can," 
that very confession disarms us, and we think better 
of him than we did before. Therefore it is that God 
so exhorts us to confess our sins to him. God is like 
us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like 
God, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 59 

When engineers would bridge a stream, they often 
carry over at first but a single cord. With that, next, 
they stretch a wire across. Then strand is added to 
strand until a foundation is laid for planks ; and now 
the bold engineer finds safe footway, and walks from 
side to side. So God takes from us some golden- 
threaded pleasure, and stretches it hence into heaven. 
Then he takes a child, and then a friend. Thus he 
^bridges death, and teaches the thoughts of the most 
timid to find their way hither and thither between the 
shores. 



Any feeling that takes a man away from his home 
is a traitor to the household. 



When I see how much has been written of those 
who have lived ; how the Greeks preserved every say- 
ing of Plato's ; how Boswell followed Johnson, 
gathering up every leaf that fell from that rugged old 
oak, and pasting away, — I almost regret that one of 
the disciples had not been a recording angel, to pre- 
serve the odor and richness of every word of Christ. 
When John says, "And there are also many other 
things which 'Jesus did, the which, if they should be 
written every one, I suppose that even the world it- 



60 Best Thoughts of 

self could not contain the books that should be 
written," it affects me more profoundly than when I 
think of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, 
or the perishing of Grecian art in Athens or Byzan- 
tium. The creations of Phidias were cold stone, 
overlaid by warm thought ; but Christ described his 
own creations when he said, " The words that I speak 
unto you, they are life." The leaving out of these 
things from the New Testament, though divinely 
wise, seems, to my yearning, not so much the unac- 
complishment of noble things, as the destruction of 
great treasures, which had already had oral life, but 
failed of incarnation in literature. 



A church under the influence of veneration, 
merely, is a court-house ; and the judge sits there, and 
cold officers are standing by him, and men are waiting 
to receive their sentence. God's church is God's 
house ; and God's house is our home ; and a Christian 
home ought to be bright, cheerful, and happy. When 
God is the entertainer of his people, he thanks no man 
for "dim, religious light," or for casting forth the 
flowers, and extinguishing the lamps of hope and joy 
in the sanctuary. 



There are two classes of people in the church : the 



Henry Ward Beec her. 61 

religionists, who love God by trying to do right ; and 
the Christians, who are inspired to do right by loving 
God. 



When once the filial feeling is breathed into the 
heart, the soul cannot be terrified by augustness, or 
justice, or any form of divine grandeur ; for then, to 
such an one, all the attributes of God are but so many 
arms stretched abroad through the universe, to gather 
and to press to his bosom those whom he loves. The 
greater he is, the gladder are we, so that he be our 
Father still. 

But, if one consciously turns away from God, or 
fears him, the nobler and grander the representation 
be, the more terrible is his conception of the divine 
Adversary that frowns upon him. The God whom 
love beholds rises upon the horizon like mountains 
which carry summer up their sides to the very top ; 
but that sternly just God whom sinners fear stands 
cold against the sky, like Mont Blanc ; and from his 
icy sides the soul, quickly sliding, plunges headlong 
down to unrecalled destruction. 



Public sentiment signifies the common march of 
good men's thoughts. It should be but a road, 
marked plain, that men may know the way to travel ; 



62 Best Thoughts of 

but, instead of this, public sentiment is employed 
sometimes as a bribe to stop free thinking; as an in- 
timidation to check free acting ; as a bauble to lure 
approbativeness, or as a threatened fool's-cap with 
which to terrify it. The virtues which public senti- 
ment drills into cowards may be of great benefit to 
society, but are of little credit to the men upon whom 
they are dragooned. 



All human affairs follow nature's great analogue, 
the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of 
growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the 
invisible growth by the root ; the second, and much 
accelerated, is the visible growth by the stem ; but 
when root and stem have gathered their forces, there 
comes the third period, in which the plant quickly 
flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit. 

The beginnings of moral enterprises in this world 
are never to be measured by any apparent growth. 
The root is always concealed by the very soil which 
gives it life, and in which it spreads and hides. Then 
comes the middle period, in which it contends with 
opposing elements, but grows by the very things that 
would destroy it, as plants do by the winds that would 
prostrate them. At length comes the sudden ripe- 
ness and the full success, and he who is called in at the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 63 

final moment deems this success his own. He is but 
the reaper, and not the laborer. Other men sowed 
and tilled, and he but enters into their labors. Before 
the time of Christ the world grew by the root ; since 
that time until now it has grown by the stem ; but 
ten thousand swelling buds of promise and of proph- 
ecy do now declare the time near at hand for 
flowers and fruits. Henceforth the world makes 
haste. 



God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold 
the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O 
Love ! O Affliction ! Ye are the guides that show 
us the way through the great airy space where our 
loved ones walked ; and, as hounds easily follow the 
scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, 
while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our 
dear ones in heaven. 



There are some days when a man's thoughts seem 
to be as distinct from his personality as sparks are 
from the chimney of a winter's forge, streaming forth 
at night ; or as birds are distinct from the trees from 
out of which they fly. Nor, if the mood be happy, 
are they indeed much unlike birds, when, in a 
feathery fury of delight, with a hundred songs of me- 



64 Best Thoughts of 

lodious dissonance, they sitting sing, and flying sing, 
and turn in the air with every fantastic gyration. 



How sad is that field from Which battle has just 
departed ! By as much as the valley was exquisite in 
its loveliness is it now sublimely sad in its desolation. 
Such to me is the Bible when a fighting theologian 
has gone through it. 

How wretched a spectacle is a garden into which 
cloven-footed beasts have entered ! That which yes- 
terday was fragrant, and shone all over with crowded 
beauty, is to-day rooted, despoiled, trampled and 
utterly devoured, and all over the ground you shall 
find but the rejected buds of flowers, and leaves, and 
forms that have been champed for their juices and 
then rejected. Such to me is the Bible when the 
pragmatic prophecy-monger and the swinish utilita- 
rian have toothed its fruits and craunched its blos- 
soms. 

O garden of the Lord ! whose seeds dropped down 
from heaven, and to whom angels bear watering dews 
night by night ! O flowers and plants of righteous- 
ness ! O sweet and holy fruits ! we walk among you, 
and gaze with loving eyes, and rest under your odor- 
ous shadows ; nor will we, with sacrilegious hand, tear 
you, that we may search the secret of your roots, nor 



Henry Ward Beecher. 65 

spoil you, that we may know how such wondrous 
grace and goodness are evolved within you ! 



The voyage of life should be right across the ocean, 
whose waters never shrink, and where the keel never 
rubs the bottom. But men are afraid to venture, and 
hang upon the coast, and explore lagoons, or swing 
at anchor in wind-sheltered bays. Some men put 
their keel into riches, some into sensuous pleasure, 
some into friendship, and all these are shallow for 
anything that draws as deep as the human soul does. 
God's work in each age, indicated by the great move- 
ments of his providence, is the only thing deep enough 
for the heart. We ought to begin life as at the source 
of a river, growing deeper every league to the sea ; 
whereas, in fact, thousands are like men who enter the 
mouths of rivers and sail upwards, finding less and less 
water every day; and in old age they lie shrunk and 
gaping upon dry gravel. 



Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right 
using of strength ; and strength is not used rightly 
when it only serves to carry a man above his fellows 
for his own solitary glory. He is greatest whose 
strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction 
of his own. 



66 Best Thoughts of 

There is a reason why students prefer the night 
to the day for their labors. Through the day their 
thoughts are diverted into a thousand streams ; but 
at night they settle into pools, which, deep and undis- 
turbed, reflect the stars. But night-labor, in time, 
will destroy the student ; for it is marrow from his 
own bones with which he fills his lamp. 



JLove is God's loaf ; and this is that feeding for 
which we are to taught, to pray, " Give us this day our 
daily bread." 



A cunning man overreaches no one half so much 
as himself. 



God has appointed certain insects, birds, and beasts 
to be destroyers. They consume decaying matters ; 
they roll up and feast on filth. To their palate life is 
unseasoned and insipid; but death has flavor. Such, 
also, are minor critics in literature, cynics" in morals, 
and heresy-hunters in religion. 



Sects and Christians that desire to be known by 
the undue prominence of some single feature of 
Christianity are necessarily imperfect just in pro- 
portion to the distinctness of their peculiarities. The 



Henry Ward Beecher. 67 

power of Christian truth is in its unity and symmetry, 
and not in the saliency or brilliancy of any of its special 
doctrines. If among painters of the human face and 
form there should spring up a sect of the eyes, and 
another sect of the nose, a sect of the hand, and a sect 
of the foot, and all of them should agree but in the 
one thing of forgetting that there was a living spirit 
behind the features more important than them all, 
they would too much resemble the schools and cliques 
of Christians, for the spirit of Christ is the great es- 
sential truth ; doctrines are but the features of the 
face, and ordinances but the hands and feet. 

It would almost seem as if there were a certain 
drollery of art which leads men who think they are 
doing one thing to do another and very different one. 
Thus men have set up in their painted church windows 
the symbolisms of virtues and graces, and the images 
of saints, and even of divinity itself. Yet now, what 
does the window do but mock the separations and 
proud isolations of Christian men ? For there sit the 
audience, each one taking a separate color, and there 
are blue Christians and red Christians, there are yellow 
saints and orange saints, there are purple Christians 
and green Christians ; but how few are simple, pure, 
white Christians, uniting all the cardinal graces, and 
proud, not of separate colors, but of the whole man- 
hood of Christ ! 



63 Best Thoughts of 

When laws, customs, or institutions cease to be 
beneficial to man, they cease to be obligatory. 



The strength of a man consists in finding out the 
way in which God is going, and going in that way 
too. For God goes before and ploughs, and we can 
but follow after and plant our seed in his furrow. 



The variableness of Christian moods is often a 
matter of great and unnecessary suffering ; but 
Christian life does not follow the changes of feeling. 
Our feelings are but the torch ; and our life is the 
man that carries it. The wind that flares the flame 
does not make the man waver. The flame may sway 
hither and thither, but he holds his course straight on. 
Thus, oftentimes, it is, that our Christian hopes are 
carried as one carries a lighted candle through the 
windy street, that seems never to be so nearly blown 
out as when we step through the open door, and in a 
moment we are safe within. Our wind-blown feelings 
rise and fall through all our life, and the draught of 
death threatens quite to extinguish them ; but, one 
moment more, and they shall rise and forever shine 
serenely in the unstormed air of heaven. 



Henry Ward Beecher. '69 

I think we ought to buoy for ourselves in our 
course as we buoy a harbor. Off this shoal a black 
buoy floats, and says to those who sail by, as plainly 
as if it spoke in all languages, " Keep to the right 
here ; " and over against it floats another, and says, 
11 Keep to the left here." Now, in life's ocean, wher- 
ever we know the quicksands are, wherever we have 
once been stranded, let us sink the buoy and anchor 
of memory, and keep to the right or the left, as the 
shoal may be. 



Many pray to be made " men in Christ Jesus," and 
think in some miraculous way it will be given to 
them ; but God says, " I will try my child, and see if 
he is sincere," and so he lays a burden upon him, and 
says, " Now stand up under it, for thus you are to 
grow strong." He sends a provocation, and says to 
him, " Be patient." He throws him into perplexities, 
and says, " Where now are thy resources?" If the 
ambitious ore dreads the furnace, the forge, the anvil, 
the rasp, and the file, it should never desire to be 
made a sword. Man is the iron, and God is the 
smith ; and we are always either in the forge or on 
the anvil. God is shaping us for higher things. 



There are some Christians whose secular life is an 



jo Best Thoughts of 

arid, worldly strife, and whose religion is but a turbid 
sentimentalism. Their life runs along that line where 
the overflow of the Nile meets the desert. It is the 
boundary-line between sand and mud. 



Nature inspires us with a love of life, but can 
never teach us how to die. God would win us into 
death as the sun wins buds into blossoms. I often 
hear Christians speaking of a desire to die, that they 
may be free from the troubles of life ; and they seem 
to me like birds that fly out of the tree frightedly, on 
account of noises which they hear beneath. But true 
Christians, it seems to me, should be like birds upon 
the sunset-top, stooping with half-opened wings, as if 
they heard the call of other birds in distant forests, 
and flew on purpose, and joyfully, to find their mates. 



If you can find a place between the throne of God 
and the (Just to which man's body crumbles where 
the focal responsibilities of law do not weigh upon 
him, I will find a vacuum in nature. They press 
upon him from God out of eternity, and from the 
earth out of nature, and from every department of 
life, as constant and all-surrounding as the pressure 
of the air. 



Henry Ward Beecher. ji 

There is a new word much used ; it is ism. 
Every new or more perfect application of a Christian 
principle to the life of society is called an ism so 
long as men fight it, but a glorious evidence of the 
divinity of Christianity as soon as they are defeated 
by it. Selfish men abhor all isms of benevolence ; 
proud men, all isms of condescension ; the griping 
hand hates the open palm ; greediness abhors moder- 
ation ; and self-love thinks the love of others to be 
a spendthrift. And thus it comes to pass that isms 
are found and dreaded almost only among the great 
humanities of the day. If it be an ism to uplift 
the poor ; to defend the slave ; to maintain every- 
where the right, though to do it overthrows time- 
honored institutions, — then God Almighty is the 
Father of isms, and has been propagating them 
since the world began ; and he will lead the church 
from one ism to another, till it stands in Zion and 
before God. 



What a pin is w T hen the diamond has dropped 
from its setting, that is the Bible when its emotive 
truths have been taken away. What a babe's clothes 
are when the babe has slipped out of them into 
death, and the mother's arms clasp only rainment, 
would be the Bible, if the Babe of Bethlehem, and 



72 Best Thoughts of 

the truths of deep-heartedness that clothed his life, 
should slip out of it. 



Our humiliations work out our most elevated 
joys. The way that a drop of rain comes to sing 
in the leaf that rustles in the top of the tree all 
summer long is by going down to the roots first, 
and from thence ascending to the bough. 



Many children grow up like plants under bell- 
glasses. They are surrounded only by artificial 
and prepared influences. They are house-bred, 
room - bred, nurse - bred, mother - bred — everything 
but self-bred. The object of training is to teach 
the child to take care of himself ; but many parents 
use their children only as a kind of spool on which 
to reel off their own experience ; and they are bound 
and corded until they perish by inanity, or break all 
bonds and cords, and rush to ruin by reaction. 



We have the promises of God as thick as daisies 
in summer meadows, that death, which men most 
fear, shall be to us the most blessed of experiences, 
if we trust in him. Death is unclasping ; joy, break- 
ing out in the desert ; the heart, gome to its blossom- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 73 

ing-time ! Do we call it dying when the bud bursts 
into flower ? 



Men who stand on any other foundation than the 
rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees 
by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the 
branches, and the river sings below, but all the 
while the waters are undermining the soil about the 
roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls 
with a crash into the stream ; and then its nest is 
sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer. 
But birds that hide their young in the clefts of the 
rock are undisturbed, and, after every winter, coming 
again, they find their nests awaiting them, and all 
their life long brood the summer in the same places, 
impregnable to time or storm. 



It is one of the worst effects of prosperity to 
make a man a vortex instead of a fountain ; so that, 
instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in. 



In the first years of a church, its members are 
willing to endure hardships and to make great ex- 
ertions ; but when once it is prosperous, they desire 
to take their ease, as one who builds a ship is will- 



74 Best Thoughts of 

ing to worK all the way from keel to deck : until she 
is launched ; thenceforward, he expects the ocean to 
buoy him up and the winds to bear him on. The 
youth-time of churches produces enterprise ; their 
age, indolence. But even this might be borne,, did 
not these dead men sit in the door of their sepulchres, 
crying out against every living man who refuses to 
wear the livery of death. I am almost tempted to 
think that if, with the end of every pastorate, the 
church itself were disbanded and destroyed, to be 
gathered again by the succeeding teacher, we should 
thus secure an immortality of youth. 



There is no such thing as preaching patience into 
people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to 
practise it while they hear. No man can learn pa- 
tience except by going out into the hurlyburly world, 
and taking life just as it blows. Patience is but lying 
to, and riding out the gale. 



As musicians sometimes go through perplexing 
mazes of discord in order to come to the inexpressible 
sweetness of after-chords, so men's discords of trouble 
and chromatic jars, if God be their leader, are only 
preparing for a resolution into such harmonious strains 



Henry Ward Beecher. 75 

as could never have been raised except upon such un- 
dertones. Most pnsons are more anxious to stop 
their sorrow than t % carry it forward to its choral out- 
burst, " Now no chastening for the present seemeth 
to be joyous, but grievous ; nevertheless, afterward, 
it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto 
them that are exercised thereby." 



It is sometimes of God's mercy that men in the 
eager pursuit of worldly aggrandizement are baffled ; 
for they are very like a train going down an inclined 
plane — putting on the brake is not pleasant, but it 
keeps the car on the track. 



To the end of the world the word garden shall be 
sweeter than flower or fruit could make it ; for the 
Son of God, the fairest thing that ever grew, was 
planted there, and sprang from thence in celestial 
bloom and glory. 



Men often think an institution to be good because 
it has done good ; but institutions are often only an- 
other kind of national school-book, whose object it is 
to help the scholar to pass on and leave it behind. 
Neither boys nor society are to be kept forever in the 



76 . Best Thoughts of 

hornbook. There must be, in any healthful society, 
a process of absorption, or of reconstruction of its 
organizations. Principles never change ; their incar- 
nations continually do. A society whose institutions 
are unchanging is itself ungrowing. The living body 
alters. Only the dead rest. That is a brave and good 
institution which speedily digs its own grave. 



When our cup runs over, we let others drink the 
drops that fall, but not a drop from within the rim, 
and call it charity ; when the crumbs are swept from 
our table, we think it generous to let the dogs eat 
them ; as if that were charity which permits others to 
have what we cannot keep ; which says to Ruth, 
" Glean after the young men," but forgets to say to the 
young men, " Let fall also some of the handfuls of 
purpose for her." 



There is no such preaching as the experience which 
a man gives who has just realized the sinfulness of his 
soul. I often hear myself outpreached by some new 
convert who can hardly put words together. Some 
say experimental preaching is shallow. Shallow ! It 
is deep as the soul of God. 



Men are afraid of breaking down where they are 



Henry Ward Beecher. J 7 

strongest, but are seldom afraid of their weaknesses. 
If a man is hard, he fears mellowness. A proud man 
watches lest he should let himself down. A selfish 
man is vigilant against being unduly tempted by pro- 
fuse kindness ; and no man has a more salutary fear of 
rash generosity than he whose pores are sealed so tight 
that all the suns of prosperity cannot open them. 
Men are apt to guard themselves where it is impos- 
sible for them to be overcome ; but they are quite 
careless of those open avenues through which tempta- 
tion comes and goes so easily that they are uncon- 
scious of wrong-doing because they are not pained 
by it. 



It is not well for a man to pray, cream ; and live, 
skim milk. 



Some men say, to retire to a little blissful nook, 
with a few congenial ones to love, and to hear the dis- 
tant roaring of life as those in forests hear the ocean, 
— the music, and not the storm, — would be all the 
happiness they would ask on earth. Now, where 
society is but a grand machine of despotism, where all 
civil affairs are put away from the citizen, and all reli- 
gious affairs are in the hands of the official priests, so 
that it is treason to be active in politics, and sacrilege 



78 Best Thoughts of 

to be freely active in religion, then retirement and 
leisure may be as virtuous as they are safe. But in 
our land, where society is an unbounded field for in- 
dividual exertion of every kind, and a man's useful- 
ness is limited only by his own original power, one 
needs a special edict of Providence to justify him in 
retiring from life. When leisure is a selfish luxury, 
its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind 
of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better 
digest its selfishness. 



Ever since the time of Christ, the divine Helms- 
man has been steering the world straight towards the 
lighthouse of Love. 



A true preacher is God's mint. God heats his 
heart till the truth flows like molten gold, and his 
utterance is prepared, as dies are, to stamp on the coin 
what God has cut in him. But thousands of preach- 
ers are only exchange brokers, who run between bank 
and customer to carry old coin back and forth for 
commercial uses. There is need for these too, only 
lower down. 



A man might as well fill a tree full of nightingales, 



Henry Ward Beecher. */g 

and, standing on the ground, attempt to control their 
notes and to hold them enchoired together as to 
attempt to control by his volitions the multiplied 
thoughts and feelings of his own soul. Some persons 
hearing this will say, " A man can regulate his mind 
as easily as his house." Certainly, if he has nothing 
more in his mind than is in his house; but faculties 
ought not to be furniture. We can appoint the 
bounds and the directions of our thoughts and feel- 
ings, but within those bounds we can no more control 
their individual spring than a man can control all the 
motions of the drops of water in a stream because he 
has the power to fix its shores. 



Men think God is destroying them because he is 
tuning them. The violinist screws up the key till the 
tense cord sounds the concert pitch; but it is not to 
break it, but to use it tunefully, that he stretches the 
string upon the musical rack. 



There is always the need for a man to go higher, if 
he has the capacity to go. 



There is no food for soul or body which God has 
not symbolized. He is light for the eye, sound for 



8o Best Thoughts of 

the ear, bread for food, wine for weariness, peace for 
trouble. Every faculty of the soul, if it would but 
open its door, might see Christ standing over against 
it, and silently asking by his smile, " Shall I come in 
unto thee ?" But men open the door and look down, 
not up, and thus see him not. So it is that men sigh 
on, not knowing what the soul wants, but only that it 
needs something. Our yearnings are homesicknesses 
for heaven; our sighings are for God, just as children 
that cry themselves asleep away from home, and sob 
in their slumber, know not that they sob for their 
parents. The soul's inarticulate moanings are the 
affections yearning for the Infinite, and having no one 
to tell them what it is that ails them. 



There is much contention among men whether 
thought or feeling is the better; but feeling is the 
bow, and thought the arrow, and every good archer 
must have both. Alone, one is as helpless as the 
other. The head gives artillery; the heart, powder. 
The one aims and the other fires. 



Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an 
excuse for not having it at home. A man may cut 
grafts from his tree till the tree itself has no top left 



Henry Ward Beecher, t 8 1 

with which to bear fruit. In the end, the power of 
Christian missions will be measured by the zeal of 
enlightened piety at home, as the circulation of blood 
at the extremities of the body will depend upon the 
soundness of the lungs and heart. I do not say that 
we should not send the Gospel abroad; but that we 
may do it, there must be more of it at home. We 
must deepen the wells of salvation, or drawing will 
run them dry. 



Many men affect to despise fear, and in preaching 
resent any appeal to it ; but not to fear where there is 
occasion is as great a weakness as to fear unduly, 
without reason. God planted fear in the soul as truly 
as he planted hope or courage. Fear is a kind of 
bell, or gong % which rings the mind into quick life 
and avoidance upon the approach of danger. It is 
the soul's signal for rallying. 



The world never was so low as at the creation. 
There is never so little of a tree as when it is in the 
seed. The births of God Almighty are births of 
weakness. Everything in the universe comes to its 
perfection by drill and marching — the seed, the insect, 
the animal, the man, the spiritual man. God created 
man at the lowest point, and put him into a world 



8 2 Best Thoughts of 

where almost nothing would be done for him, and 
almost everything should tempt him to do for him- 
self. The very help which God gives men is by 
teaching them how to help themselves. Want, sor- 
row, mistake, and all that men call evils are but 
disciplinarians, who insist that the scholar shall learn 
his lesson for himself, and who punish him until he 
does. 



Look not alone for your relations in your own 
house or in your own sphere. The blood of Christ is 
stronger for relationship than blood of father or 
mother. Look above you. All there are yours. Go 
down even to the bottom of society. All below you 
are judgment-day brothers ; and God's eternity is on 
them and you alike. 



How wonderful is what we call association ! I hang 
some thought upon an object, and say, " Whenever I 
come hither, ring for me as a bell of joy ;" and upon 
another I fasten an experience, saying to it, " Toll to 
me of sadness ;" and to another, " Give forth some 
bold, inspiring strain ;" and to another, " Speak to me 
always of hope." And, thereafter, each thing, true to 
its nature, whether it be tree, or place, or rock, or 
house, or that which is therein, never forgets its lesson. 



Henry Ward Beccher. 83 

Yea, and when we forget, they make us to remember, 
singing to us the notes which we had taught them. 
Thus the heart, though it may not dismember itself, 
to give a soul to the material world, has yet a power 
half to create in physical things a soul in each for it- 
self. So its life is written out, and it keeps a journal 
upon trees, upon hills, upon the face of heaven. Is it 
not for this, then, that in turn God has used every 
object in nature, every event in life, every function of 
society, every affection and endearment of human 
love, yea, and things that are not, the very silences of 
the world, and memories that are but disembodied 
events, to represent to us by association his nature 
and affections ? Thus the heaven and the earth do 
speak of God, and the great natural world is but an- 
other Bible, which clasps and binds the written one; 
for nature and grace are one. Grace is the heart of 
the flower, and nature but its surrounding petals. 



Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and when it 
cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight. 
Without liberty man is in a syncope. 



That which the persecutors once said of the apos- 
tles ought still to be said of every Christian man : 



84 Best Thoughts of 

" And they took knowledge of them that they had 
been with Jesus " (Acts iv. 13). 

Men carry unconscious signs of their life about 
them. Those that come from the forge, and those 
from the lime and mortar, and those from the humid 
soil, and those from dusty travel, bear signs of being 
workmen, and of their work. One need not ask a 
merry face or a sad one whether it hath come forth 
from joy or from grief. Tears and laughter tell their 
own story. Should one come home with fruit we say, 
"Thou art come from the orchard ;" if with hands full 
of wild flowers, " Thou art from the fields ;" if one's 
garments smell of mingled odors, we say, " Thou hast 
walked in a garden." But how much more, if one 
hath seen God, hath held converse of hope and love, 
and hath walked in heaven, should he carry in his eye 
his words, and his perfumed raiment, the sacred 
tokens of divine intercourse ! 
\ 



When the fruit is yet green, the stem holds tightly 
to the bough ; but when it is ripe, it falls with the 
first wind. So hold on tightly to your plans in life 
until God shows you that they are ripe — that they 
have accomplished their purpose ; and then let them 
go ; let them go without a murmur. 



Henry Ward Beec her. 85 

Love, in this world, is like a seed taken from the 
tropics, and planted where the winter comes too soon ; 
and it cannot spread itself in flower-clusters and wide- 
twining vines, so that the whole air is filled with the 
perfume thereof. But there is to be another summer 
for it yet. Care for the root now, and God will care 
for the top by and by. 



I heard a man who had failed in business, and 
whose furniture was sold at auction, say that when the 
cradle, and the crib, and the piano went, tears would 
come, and he had to leave the house to be a man. 
Now, there are thousands of men who have lost their 
pianos, but who have found better music in the 
sound of their children's voices and footsteps going 
cheerfully down with them to poverty than any 
harmony of chorded instruments. O how blessed 
is bankruptcy when it saves a man's children ! I see 
many men who are bringing up their children as 
I should bring up mine, if, when they were ten years 
old, I should lay them on a dissecting table and cut 
the sinews of their arms and legs, so that they could 
neither walk nor use their hands, but only sit still and 
be fed. Thus rich men put the knife of indolence 
and luxury to their children's energies, and they grow 
up fatted, lazy calves, fitted for nothing, at twenty- 



86 Best Thoughts of 

five but to drink deep and squander wide ; and the 
father must be a slave all his life, in order to make 
beasts of his children. How blessed, then, is the 
stroke of disaster which sets the children free, and' 
gives them over to the hard but kind bosom of 
Poverty, who says to them, " Work !" and, working, 
makes them men ! 



Like those fair New England lakes, greened 
around with meadows, of translucent depth and 
silver sand, on whose surface armies of white lilies, 
golden-crowned, unfold to the sun, so the Christian's 
heart should be. All its feelings and affections 
should open into life like those white lilies, and deep 
amid the blossom petals should be seen the golden 
crown of love. 



Temptations are enemies outside the castle seek- 
ing entrance. If there be no false retainer within, 
who holds treacherous parley, there can scarcely be 
even an offer. No one would make overtures to a 
bolted door or a dead wall. It is some face at the 
window that invites proffer. The violence of tempt- 
ation addressed to us is only another way of ex- 
pressing the violence of the desire within us. It 
costs nothing to reject what we do not wish, and the 



Henry Ward Beec her. 8j 

struggle required to overcome temptation measures 
the strength in us of the temptable element. Men 
ought not to say, " How powerfully the devil 
tempts !" but, " How strongly I am tempted !" 



To be weighed down with a sense of our own in- 
completeness; to long for that which we have not 
and cannot gain ; to descry noble attainments, as isl- 
ands in the sea, eagerly sought, but which change 
to clouds as we draw near; to spend our life in 
searching for the hidden land, as Columbus for the 
new continent, and to find only weeds floating, or a 
broken branch, or, at best, a bird that comes to us 
from the unknown shore ; this it is to be on earth — 
to live. And yet, are not these very yearnings the 
winds which God sends to fill our sails and give us 
good voyage homeward ? 



It is not so much by the symmetry of what we 
attain in this life that we are to be made happy as 
by the enlivening hope of what we shall reach in 
the world to come. While a man is stringing a 
harp he tries the strings, not for music, but for con- 
struction. When it is finished it shall be played 
for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart 



88 Best Thoughts of 

for future joy. He only sounds a string here and 
there to see how far his work has progressed. 



That gospel which sanctions ignorance and op- 
pression for three millions of men, what fruit or 
flower has it to shake down for the healing of the 
nations? It is cursed in its own roots, and blasted 
in its own boughs. 



Men utter a vast amount of slander against their 
physical nature, and attempt to repair deficient virtue 
by maiming their animal passions. These are to be 
trained, guided, restrained, but never crucified or 
exterminated ; for they are the soil in which we were 
planted. Our life on earth begins in the body, and 
depends for vigor upon the fulness and power of our 
physical nature. An acorn at first sprouts from the 
soil, and spreads its young leaves upon the surface of 
the ground. Every year its top grows away from it 
towards heaven ; yet the top neither forgets nor 
scorns the earth-buried root. The brightest leaf 
which the sun loves, or the wind waves on the top- 
most bough, has leave to be beautiful by what the 
root gives it, and carries in its veins the blood which 
the cold root sucked up from the moist earth. The 
top will famish when the root is hungry. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 89 

The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our pas- 
sions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor 
to our moral nature. Thus they become, as in the 
ancient fable, the harnessed steeds which bear the 
chariot of the sun. 



Happy is the man who has that in his soul which 
acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet 
roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold, but 
the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold 
can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerful- 
ness, full of sympathy, full of helpfu^ hope, causes a 
man to carry blessings of which he is himself as un- 
conscious as a lamp is of its own shining. Such an 
one moves on human life as stars move on dark 
seas to bewildered mariners ; as the sun wheels, 
bringing all the seasons with him from the south. 



Men long for Christ on earth. Christ in heaven 
is not only faint and dim, but they think a heavenly 
Being cannot have earthly love. There may be 
more purity, they think, in heavenly love than in 
earthly, but less heartiness, and heartiness is what 
they long for. Now Christ returned to heaven that 
he might love more, not less. This was a part of 



90 Best Thoughts of 

the glory which he had laid aside and was to take 
again. On earth his soul stood but in the bud. He 
went to a fairer clime that he might blossom, and 
now the heavens and the earth are full of the fra- 
grance of his love. Incarnation was limitation. 
Ascension was expansion. There was not room 
enough for such a heart while in the body. It came 
as a seed, and grew ; but we saw only the sprouting 
and the leaves. Death ripened it back again to the 
golden fulness of a heavenly state. 



No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by 
turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a 
man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he 
is, not according to what he has. 



God says the peace of the man who loves him shall 
flow like a river ; * and if ours is not such, it is be- 
cause its springs are not in Mount Zion — because its 
sources are the marshes and the lowlands, are not the 
crystal fountains of the hills. This peace shall not be 
like a shower, falling with temporary abundance, but 

* "O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments ! then had thy 
peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." — Isaiah 
xlviii. i§. 



Henry. Ward Beecher. 91 

like the river which flows by the cottage-door, always 
full and always singing. The man hears it when he 
rises in the morning ; he hears it in the quiet noon ; 
he hears it when the sun goes down ; and if he wakes 
in the night, its sound is in his ear. It was there 
when he was a child ; it was there when he grew up 
to manhood ; it was there when he was an old man ; 
it will murmur by his grave upon its banks* and sing 
and flow for his children after him. It is to such a 
river that God likens the divine bounty of peace 
given to his people. 

How little do we know of this peace of God ! We 
deem ourselves happy if we have one serene hour out 
of the twenty-four ; and if now and then there comes 
a Sabbath which is balm at morning, and sweetness 
through the still noon, and benediction at evening, we 
count it a rare and blessed experience. 

The child frightened in his play runs to seek his 
mother. She takes him upon her lap, and presses his 
head to her bosom ; and with tenderest words of love 
she looks down upon him, and smooths his hair, and 
kisses his cheek, and wipes away his tears. And then, 
in a low and gentle voice, she sings some sweet des- 
cant, some lullaby of love, and the fear fades out from 
his face, and a smile of satisfaction plays over it, and 
at length his eyes close, and he sleeps in the deep 
depths and delights of peace. God Almighty is the 



92 Best Thoughts of 

mother, and the soul is the "tired child ; and he folds 
it in his arms, and dispels its fears, and lulls it to re- 
pose, saying, " Sleep, my darling; sleep. It is I who 
watch thee." " He giveth his beloved sleep." The 
mother's arms encircle but one ; but God clasps every 
yearning soul to his bosom, and gives to it the peace 
which passeth understanding, beyond the reach of 
care or storm, 



A man has a right to picture God according to his 
need, whatever it be. This being shut up by ecclesi- 
asticism to a narrow way of coming to God has 
stifled many a soul. The whole round of symbols 
has been employed to represent God to us, the loftiest 
as well as the lowest things. The bird that fans the 
sun, and the bird that hides from it under the leaf, 
are alike taken to symbolize Jehovah. 

A man has a right to go to God by any way which 
is true to him. If you can think it out, that is your 
privilege. If you can feel it out, that is your privilege. 
One thing is certain : the child has a right to nestle 
in his father's bosom, whether he climbs there upon 
his knee or by the chair from behind; anyway, so 
that it is his father. Wherever you have seen God 
pass, mark it, and go and sit in that window again. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 93 

It is not work that kills men ; it is worry. Work 
is healthy ; you can hardly put more upon a man 
than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It 
is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but 
the friction. Fear secretes acids ; but love and trust 
are sweet juices. 



Men who have always thrust obstacles aside come 
to think their power invincible, and to make them- 
selves a battering ram against fate and circumstances. 
And when God comes down to oppose them, at first 
they try to wrestle with him ; but they limp all their 
life after, like Jacob of old, for God never wrestles 
with a man without throwing him. 

There are four degrees in men's experience of 
trouble. The lowest, and most pitiable, is that in 
which trouble overwhelms a man ; in which he is 
carried away by the force and swell of its waves, as a 
leaf is borne down the current of a rushing rivem 
Shame that a man, — a man } — the son of God, and 
the heir of immortality, should be so swept and 
swayed by circumstances — a little money more or a 
little less — should crouch and fall down, unable to rise. 
May God spare me from seeing any of you in such a 
case. The second degree is that in which the man's 
troubles are about him like deep waters, but do not 



$4 -Best Thoughts of 

quite overpower him. He is just able to stand, and 
to keep his head above the waves. This is better 
than the first, but is the lowest of all that deserves 
the name of good. The third degree is that in which 
the man's heart is like a room where the father sits 
with his family, while the storm roars without. The 
floods beat against the windows ; the wind whistles 
and moans at every crevice ; but he heeds it not, for 
the fire burns brightly, and his wife and children sit 
smiling- in its glow. Here the man has so far con- 
quered his trials that he has peace within. The 
fourth, and highest, degree is that in which the man's 
troubles have become luminous to him, in which he is 
victorious over them, and makes them yield him 
strength and joy. And it is God's design, in wres- 
tling with men, to bring them to this state, in which 
their griefs shall be the food of ecstasy and the wine 
of triumph. 



To be praised, and to have the reputation of liber- 
ality, is the way many people have of taking interest 
on what they lend to the Lord. It is probable that 
benevolence is only the cat's paw of vanity, when our 
obscure and casual kindnesses seem to us like pale, in- 
odorous flowers grown in a solitary wood, and only 
public and bruited charities have color and fragrance. 



Henry Ward Beechef. 95 

A man should fear when he enjoys only what good 
he does publicly. Is it not the publicity, rather than 
the charity, that he loves ? Is it not vanity, rather 
than benevolence, that gives such charities? A man 
must be very rich in secret charities before he can 
bear the strain of public beneficence. 



The seventy-third psalm reminds me of some of 
Beethoven's symphonies; and these, again, always 
make me think of the tumult of the forest, when the 
wind roars and swells and surges with wild discord 
among the trees; when the branches creak and crash 
against each other, and every bough has a separate 
wail. By and by the wind lulls ; and when twilight 
is beneath, and all the forest is quiet, or only so much 
noiseful as the insects make it, then some bird on a 
tree-top sings out clear and sweet, and his song goes 
floating away over the wood, the very soul of peaceful 
joy. And it seems to me that the symphonies of 
Beethoven — that Milton of musicians — reproduce in 
themselves the sounds of the forest. In the opening 
passages, the half-concordant discords clash one upon 
another ; there is moaning, and strife, and war of 
sound ; but, at length, out of the jar and the conflict 
is evolved a clear flowing melody, as sweet as the 



96 Best Thoughts of 

song of the bird and as gentle as the twilight rustle 
of the leaves. 

Now, this psalm is like the symphonies ; for its 
opening verses clash upon each other, and are full of 
tumult and yearning. 

"But as for me, my feet were almost gone, my 
steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the 
foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For 
there are no bands in their death, but their strength 
is firm. They are not in trouble as other men ; neither 
are they plagued like other men. . . . Verily, I have 
cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in 
innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued, 
and chastened every morning." 

But when this strain is ended, then rises the sweet 
and joyful descant, " Nevertheless, I am continually 
with thee ; thou hast holden me by my right hand. 
Thou shalt guide me by thy counsel, and afterward 
receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but 
thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire 
besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth ; but 
God is the strength of my heart, and my portion 
forever." 



Through the week we go down into the valleys of 
care and shadow. Our Sabbaths should be hills of 



Henry Ward Beecher. 97 

light and joy in God's presence ; and so, as time rolls 
by, we shall go on from mountain-top to mountain- 
top, till at last we catch the glory of the gate, and 
enter in to go no more out forever. 



We should brave trouble as the New England boy 
braves winter. The school is a mile away over the 
snowy hill, yet he lingers not by the fire ; but, with 
his books slung over his shoulder, and his cap tied 
closely under his chin, he sets out to face the stomi. 
And when he reaches the topmost ridge, where the 
powdered snow lies in drifts, and the north wind 
comes keen and biting, does he shrink and cower 
down beneath the fences, or run into the nearest 
house to warm himself? No; he buttons up his coat, 
and rejoices to defy the blast, and tosses the snow 
wreaths with his foot ; and so, erect and fearless, with 
strong heart and ruddy cheek, he goes on to his place 
at school. 

Now, when the fierce winds of adversity blow over 
you, and your life's summer lies buried beneath frost 
and snow, do not linger inactive, or sink cowardly 
down by the way, or turn aside from your course for 
momentary warmth and shelter, but, with stout heart 
and firm step, go forward in God's strength to vanquish 
trouble, and to bid defiance to disaster. If there is 



98 Best Thoughts of 

ever a time to be ambitious, it is not when ambition 
is easy, but when it is hard. Fight in darkness; fight 
when you are down ; die hard, and you won't die at 
all. That gelatinous-bodied man, whose bones are 
not even muscles, and whose muscles are pulp— that 
man is a coward. 



The things which most concerned men in past 
ages — food, raiment, wealth, place, personal honor 

— are all forgotten now ; but those things which 
seemed to them the most shadowy and unsubstantial, 

— their faith, their ideals, their principles, — these are 
now the only abiding remembrancers. Thus men are 
kept alive on earth by that which is invisible, and 
sunk to the bottom by that which is material. Time 
is made up of waters so thin that nothing may float 
thereon which is heavier than unseen truths and 
heart treasures. As at sea we descry ships by the 
sails which lift themselves high above the curve of 
the ocean, while the .dark and heavy hulls, where the 
freights are, are sunk below the sight — so the con- 
voys of men that sailed in the past are no longer 
seen where they carried the much-prized freight, but 
in the lifting-up of their spars and sails against the 
heaven, high above the bend and curve of the ocean 
of time. 



Henry Ward Bcecher. 99 

The more thorough a man's education is, the more 
he yearns for and is pushed forward to new achieve- 
ment. The better a man is in this world, the better 
he is compelled to be. That bold youlh who climbed 
up the Natural Bridge in Virginia, and carved his 
name higher than any other, found when he had 
done .so, that it was impossible for him to descend, 
and that his only alternative was to go on and scale 
the height and find safety at the top. Thus it is 
with all climbing in this life. There is no going 
down. It is climbing or falling. Kvery upward 
step makes another needful ; and so we must go on 
until we reach heaven, the summit of the aspirations 
of time. 



Whenever an emotion rises up and projects its 
life into the intellect, and the intellect is magnetized 
by it, the truths belonging to that emotion will be 
clearer seen under these vision-judgments than at 
any other time. Many men confound moral excite- 
ments with those of their passions, and think it not 
prudent to act upon their feelings. They wait till 
excitement has cooled. The excitement of passion 
should cool; but, of the nobler powers, never. I 
should as soon think of saying to the workmen at 
a foundery, "Why do you pour that liquid, scintil- 



ioo Best Thoughts of 

lating iron into the mould ? Why dd you not wait 
till it is cold before you do it ? " as of asking a man 
why he heeded his convictions, and his judgments of 
moral truths, when his intellect was roused and his 
heart on fire. If he waits till he has cooled down, 
they will be as dross and cinders compared to what 
they would have" been when his heart throbbed and 
was alive with blessed excitement. 

An exploring party are seeking the best route 
across the isthmus for a canal from ocean to ocean. 
The country is unknown to them, and they make but 
little progress in their search. At length the leader 
descries a mountain, misty blue, against the horizon, 
and knows that its top will show them the whole 
way on either side. So on they press, now fording 
streams, and now lost in the obscurity of forests, but 
ever keeping the mountain before them, and drawing 
nearer and nearer, till at nightfall they rest upon its 
base, and with the morning light climb its side, and, 
lo ! the land lies, picture-like, below them, stretching 
away on either hand to both oceans. They mark the 
water-courses, and the trend of the valleys, and, be- 
hold ! to the west, how the mountains open like a 
gate to the Pacific Sea, and how, to the east, a broad 
river with unconscious skill finds its way through the 
lowlands to the Atlantic ! But suppose, while they 
can thus easily determine their course, some con- 



Henry Ward Beecher, id 

servative among them should exclaim, "This is all 
folly. If we would judge rightly, we must be down 
where the valleys curve and the rivers run," and, 
heeding his advice, they should all descend the 
mountain. Would they find their way, down there ? 
Would not the jungle shut them in, and hide from 
them the whole map? 

Now, the soul's hours of strong excitement are 
its luminous hours — its mountains of vision, from 
which it looks over the landscape of life with unob- 
structed gaze. And the observations it then takes, 
and the judgments it forms, as far transcend the 
scope and truth of its ordinary sight and reasoning 
as the view from the seaward-looking mountain 
transcends the view from the pent-up valley. 



I am profoundly affected by the grandeur of 
prophecy. God unveils the frescoed wall of the 
future, not so much that we may count the figures, 
and measure the robes, and analyze the pigments, 
but that, gazing upon it, our imaginations may be 
enkindled and hope be inspired to bear us through 
the dismal barrenness of the present. Prophecy was 
not addressed to the reason, nor to the statistical 
faculty, but to the imagination ; and I should as soon 
think of measuring love by the scales of commerce, 



102 Best Thoughts of 

or of admiring flowers by the rule of feet and inches, 
or of applying arithmetic to taste and enthusiasm, as 
calculations and figures to these grand evanishing 
signals which God waves in the future only to tell 
the world which way it is to march. 



The disputes which have filled the church upon the 
doctrine of perfection seem to me to have been piti- 
able. They reveal the narrowest conception of human 
character. God's idea of perfection is not mere con- 
formity to rule and law, but, with this, development 
into a state far beyond anything known among men. 
Perfection is ripeness ; but time is not a summer long 
enough to ripen the soul. Heaven is the soul's sum- 
mer. 

The perfection of the schools is a kind of mandarin 
perfection. Suppose a Chinese mandarin, whose gar- 
den was filled with dwarfed plants and trees, should 
show me an oak tree, two feet high, growing in a pot 
of earth, and should say to me, — 

" A perfect tree must be sound at the root — must 
it not ? And it must have all its branches complete 
and its leaves green. Look here. This root is sound ; 
there is no decay in the trunk ; it has the full number 
of branches ; the leaves are bright and green, and little 



Henry Ward Beecher. 103 

acorns are ripening all over it. It is a perfect tree ; 
why do you not admire it ?" 

A miserable, two foot oak ! I turn from it to think 
of God's oak in the open pasture, a hundred feet high, 
vvide-boughed and braving the storm. 

Now, when a man comes to me talking of perfec- 
tion, and says, "A* perfect man must have such and 
such qualities — must he not ? He must control his 
passions and appetites and regulate his affections. He 
must not sin in this thing, or that thing, or the other. 
Such am I. I do not commit this fault, or fall into 
that error. I have trained and schooled myself. Be- 
hold me ! I am perfect!" I can but exclaim, " Miser- 
able, two-foot Christian ! " I have no patience with 
this low standard — these earthly comparisons, this 
relative goodness. I must outgrow this pot of earth. 
God's eternity is in my soul, and I shall need it all to 
grow up to the measure, of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ. 



Not that which men do worthily, but that which 
they do successfully, is what history makes haste to 
record. 



Dust, by its own nature, can rise only so far above 
the road ; and birds which fly higher never have it 



104 Best Thoughts of 

upon their wings. So the heart that knows how to 
fly high enough escapes those little cares and vexa- 
tions which brood upon the earth, but cannot rise 
above it into that purer air. 



When mists have hung low over the hills, and the 
day has been dark with intermittent showers, at length 
great clouds begin to hurry across the sky, the wind 
rises, and the rain comes pouring down; then we look 
out and exclaim, " Why, this is the clearing-up shower." 
And when the floods have spent themselves, the clouds 
part to let the blue sky tremble through them, and the 
west wind bears them away seaward, and, though they 
are yet black and threatening, we see their silver edges 
as they pass, and know that just behind them are sing- 
ing birds and glittering dew-drops ; and, lo ! while yet 
we look, the sun bursts forth, and lights them up in 
the eastern heaven with the glory of the rainbow. 

Now, to the Christian whose life has been dark with 
brooding cares that would not lift themselves, and on 
whom chilling rains of sorrow have fallen at intervals 
through all his years, death, with its sudden blast and 
storm, is but the clearing-up shower; and just behind 
it are the songs of angels, and the serenity and glory 
of heaven. 



The truest self-respect is not to think of self. 



Henry Ward Bee c her. 105 

Men in extensive and prosperous business are often 
a target for envy to shoot at ; and when they fail and 
go down, there are thousands who wickedly rejoice in 
their fall. But in our days some men are institutions. 
They do not stand like Pompey's Pillar or Cleopatra's 
Needle, towering to the sky, detached and alone; they 
are like mountains which carry forests far up their 
sides, and shelter and nourish ten thousand living 
things in their shadow. Some one says, " Why do you 
care that that water-wheel is broken ? A black, lum- 
bering thing, half of the time in the water and half of 
the time out. Why do you not care for the nicer 
wheels and spindles within the building?" 

I do care, and therefore I am sorry for the breaking 
of the great wheel. Its axis passes within, and by 
drum and bands its power is communicated to the 
various rooms, and every spindle is dependent upon 
its revolutions. When an earthquake comes, by as 
much as a house is elevated above the others, by so 
much is its ruin greater than theirs — the third story 
crashing into the second, and the second into the first. 
Now, men in extensive business are mountains of 
shelter ; ponderous wheels that turn the mill ; lofty 
houses which cannot fall without causing wide-spread 
disaster ; and when we hear of their failure, we must 
not think of them alone, but also of the ten thousand 
dependents who are affiliated with them. In a not 



106 Best Thoughts of 

irreverent sense it may be said, they are " set for the 
fall and rising of many in Israel." 



" I am the way." As a road is that along which 
men go to their daily avocations, God chooses it to 
represent himself in this universal use, this under- 
lying support of all things. Who would dare to say 
this of God but God ? Some beasts carry their young, 
and some birds carry their young, and mothers carry 
their children ; but who but God could say, " I am the 
road ; press me with your feet." This is the highway 
cast up ; and on it the ransomed of the Lord shall 
return and come to Zion, with songs and everlasting 
joy upon their heads. 



I pity those women whose staff is their needle ; for 
when they lean upon it, it pierces, not their side, but 
their heart. The devil's broadsword, in this world, 
has often been the needle with which a woman sews 
to earn her daily bread. I think the needle has slain 
more than the sword of war. 



When there is love in the heart there are rainbows 
in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with 



gorgeous hues. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 107 

Our life begins in the senses. Men walk upon the 
ground ; but above it God has sprung the blue arch 
of heaven, and they live by breathing the air. So it 
is with our interior life. The material world is the 
foundation, the grand workshop for our faculties ; 
but if this be all, — if there hangs not above it God's 
invisible realm of truth, in which we breathe, — there 
can be no healthy living. That a plant may grow, 
we put manure into the soil ; but when the roots have 
taken hold upon it, and it has shot up into stem, and 
leaves, and flowers, we do not pour manure into the 
white blossom. It holds up its cup, and says, " O 
Heaven ! send thy light, and drop down thy dew." 
And the light glows, and the dew falls, and the flower 
expands by feeding upon the air. 

So man's life must begin in the material. He must 
first learn how to live as an animal, and must employ 
all those forces which will contribute to his develop- 
ment ; but when he comes to the blossoms of faith, 
and hope, and courage, he needs other aliment. They 

must unfold, and be nourished in God's upper air. 

* 



Let the day have a blessed baptism by giving your 
first waking thoughts into the bosom of God. The 
first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. 



io8 Best Thoughts of 

When God shakes men as dust from under the 
summer threshing-floor, the right hand of a man's 
strength is as powerless as the left hand of a man's 
weakness, and his wisdom is as folly. What avails 
the wisdom of the apple to make it cling to the bough 
when it is ripe in autumn time ? or the wisdom of the 
leaf to hold it fast to the stem when the tempest 
calls ? or the wisdom of the tree to make it stand 
secure when a rock from the cliff comes crashing 
down through its piny branches ? When God sends 
storms upon men, they must imitate the humble grass, 
which saves itself by lying down. It is better to lie 
down than to break down. Therefore it is said, 
" Humble yourselves before the mighty hand of God, 
that in due season he may raise you up." 



When at last the sound of death shall be in our 
ears, may it be but the noise of the wheels of God 
Almighty's chariot come to take us home — our 
schooling over, and our long vacation begun in 
heaven. Forever ! Not this side the grave, which 
extinguishes all, but in that proud land which lies 
beyond, unseen by mortal eye, thank God ! and 
unwet by mortal tear. 



That which men suppose the imagination to be ; 



Henry Ward Beec her. 169 

and to do, is often frivolous enough and mischievous 
enough ; but that which God meant it to be in the 
mental economy is not merely noble but superemi- 
nent. It is the distinguishing element in all refine- 
ment. It is the secret and marrow of civilization. It 
is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagina- 
tion is what an observatory would be without a tele- 
scope. 

As the imagination is set to look into the invisible 
and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their 
vitality ; and though it can give nothing to the body 
to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that 
freshness of youth in old age which is even more 
beautiful than youth in the young. It always seems 
to me that, before we leave this realm, deep affections 
take hold of the life to come by the hands of ideality, 
so that this quality in the old hovers upon the edge 
and bound of life, the morning star of immortality. 
Thus it is with men as with evening villages. The 
lights in some dwellings are extinguished soon after 
twilight ; in others, they hold till nine o'clock ; one 
by one they go out, until midnight ; but a few houses 
there are where the student's lamp or lover's watching- 
torch holds bright till morning pours their light into 
the ocean of its own. So such men bring through 
the flooded hours of darkness the light of yesterday 
into to-day, and are never dark and never die. Thus 



i 1 6 Best Thoughts of 

it comes to pass as it is written, " Upon those who sat 
in the region and shadow of death a great light is 
arisen." 



Doctrine is nothing but the skin of Truth set up 
and stuffed. 



So many are God's kindnesses to us, that, as 
drops of water, they run together; and it is not 
until we are borne up by the multitude of them, as 
by streams in deep channels, that we recognize them 
as coming from him. We have walked amid his 
mercies as in a forest where we are tangled among 
ten thousand growths, and touched on every hand 
by leaves and buds which we notice not. We can- 
not recall all the things he has done for us. They 
are so many that they must needs crowd upon each 
other, until they go down behind the horizon of 
memory like full hemispheres of stars that move in 
multitudes and sink, not separate and distinguish- 
able, but multitudinous, each casting light into the 
other, and so clouding each other by common 
brightness. 



There are moral crises in life — certain conjunct- 



Henry Ward Beecher, 1 1 1 

ures of affairs when God displays himself as he 
never does at other times; and if we do not then 
make observations, like some stellar phenomena, 
certain truths will not come again for ages, and to 
us, never! 

Suppose a man had travelled weary miles north- 
ward to see the midnight sun, and at length he 
reaches the little village in Norway where astrono- 
mers say at twelve o'clock the sun will touch the 
horizon, and then begin $o ascend. He looks at 
his watch, and sees that it is ten o'clock, and says : 
" Some time yet. I am tired. I'll rest a while." 
And so he throws himself down, and is soon lost in 
slumber. Meanwhile the sun descends, till, at the 
appointed time, his lower limb rests upon the pines 
that skirt the horizon ; and then he slowly rises 
again into the great round of heaven. By and by 
the man awakes and looks at his watch, and finds 
that it is two o'clock. The sun is two hours high ; 
he has missed the very thing which he journeyed 
so far to see, and, having but a single day, must 
needs depart as he came. 

Now, there are men who pray for clearer views 
of God, for a greater nearness to him, for an opener 
heaven, and more resplendent hope. At length, 
God, who loves to come in storms, draws near to 
them. Their sorrow, their trouble, their confusion 



1 1 2 Best Thoughts of 

of affairs, the darkness about them, are clouds which 
bring God upon their bosom. In that solemn 
eclipse, hid behind trouble, God would have taught 
an open ear some things which the whole life had 
pined to know. He would have shown them time, 
men, affairs, the glory of the world, as they see 
them who in heaven stand at God's right hand. 
But men are so absorbed in their trials that they 
neither hear nor see. The disciples lost the solemn 
passion of Christ through sleep ; and, until now, 
sleep or tears have hid from men those very truths 
which w T ould have given everlasting wakefulness to 
the soul, and w T iped all sad weeping from the eyes. 
No men have need to be so vigilant, so attentive, so 
listening, so appreciative, as those who are in deep 
trouble. Sorrow is Mount Sinai. If one will go 
up and talk with God, face to face, he must not 
fear the voice of thunder, nor the trumpet sounding 
long and loud. 



One of the affecting features in a life of vice is 
the longing, wistful outlooks given by the wretches 
who struggle with unbridled passions towards vir- 
tues which are no longer within their reach. Men 
in the tide of vice are sometimes like the poor creat- 
ures swept down the stream of mighty rivers, who 



Henry Ward Beecher. 113 

see people safe pn shore, and trees, and flowers, as 
they go quickly past; and all things that are desir- 
able gleam upon them for a moment to heighten 
their trouble, and to aggravate their swift-coming 
destruction. 



Troubles are often the tools by which God fash- 
ions us for better things. Far up the mountain- 
side lies a block of granite, and says to itself, " How 
happy am I in my serenity — above the winds, above 
the trees, almost above the flight of the birds ! Here 
I rest, age after age, and nothing disturbs me." 

Yet what is it ? It is only a bare block of granite 
jutting out of the cliff, and its happiness is the happi- 
ness of death. 

By and by comes the miner, and with strong and 
repeated strokes he drills a hole in its top, and 
the rock says, "What does this mean?" Then the 
black powder is poured in, and with a blast that 
makes the mountain echo, the block is blown 
asunder, and goes crashing down into the valley. 
"Ah!" it exclaims as it falls, "why this rending?" 
Then come saws to cut and fashion it ; and humbled 
now, and willing to be nothing, it is borne away 
from the mountain and conveyed to the city. Now 
it is chiselled and polished, till, at length, finished 



1 14 Best Thoughts of 

in beauty, by block and tackle it is raised, with 
mighty hoistings, high in air, to be the top-stone on 
some monument of the country's glory. 

So God Almighty casts a man down when he wants 
to chisel him, and the chiselling is always to make 
him something finer and better than he was before. 



It is a joy to know that there is a realm where all 
those aspirations which have beckoned us only to 
crown us still with thorns shall be realized ; and where 
there is no bud which shall not burst into blossom, 
and no blossom which shall fall without being filled 
into fruit. 



Like those airy sprites in fairy tales who rear the 
building through the night, unseen in the process, but 
clear and distinct in the morning's completion, so 
years, and hours, and moments are silently rearing, in 
this world's darkness, a soul - structure whose pro- 
portions the sunlight of eternity shall reveal. 



God made the world to relieve an over-full creative 
thought ; as musicians sing, as we talk, as artists 
sketch when full of suggestions. What profusion is 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 1 5 

there in his work ! When trees blossom there is not 
a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems ; 
and of leaves they have so many suits that they can 
throw them away to the winds all summer long. What 
unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest 
shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and 
haunted evermore by tremulous music ; and in the 
heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out 
of his hand, faster than sparks out of a mighty forge ! 



When a man undertakes to repent towards his 
fellow-men, it is repenting straight up a precipice ; 
when he repents towards law, it is repenting into the 
crocodile's jaws ; when he repents towards public 
sentiment, it is throwing himself into a thicket of 
brambles and thorns ; but when he repents towards 
God, he repents towards all love and delicacy. God 
receives the soul as the sea the bather, to return it 
gain, purer and whiter than He took it. 



Every Christian should begin to doubt himself, if 
he finds, after ten years, that self-denial is as hard in 
the same things as it was at first. 



There are joys which long to be ours. God sends 

I 



1 1 6 * Best Thoughts of 

ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds 
seeking inlet ; but we are shut up to them, and so 
they bring us nothing, but sit and sing a while upon 
the roof and then fly away, 



When a man defrauds you in weight, he sins 
against you, not against the scales, which are only the 
instrument of determining true and false weight. 
When men sin, it is against God, and not against his 
law, which is but the indicator of right and wrong. 
You care little for sins against God's law. It has no 
blood in its veins, no sensibility. Now, every sin that 
you commit is personal to God, and not merely an 
infraction of his law. It is casting javelins and arrows 
of base desire into His loving bosom. I think no 
truth can be discovered which would be so powerful 
upon the moral sense of men as that which should 
disclose to them that sinning is always a personal 
offence against a personal God. Law without is only 
an echo of God's heart-beat within. 



Paul and his companions meddled, to be sure, only 
with the religion of Jesus Christ ; but that, faithfully 
preached, meddles with everything else on earth. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 1 7 

A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs 
of the tree of liberty. 



When I used to fish in mountain streams, if I had 
a short line and rod, I could direct it easily, and throw 
it into this or that pool as I pleased ; but if I let out 
my line till it was twenty or thirty feet long, I could 
not direct it, but I was the victim of every floating 
stick, and jutting rock, and overhanging bough. So 
I have seen men wading down the stream of life, 
jumping from stone to stone, slipping on this rock, 
and falling into that pool, because their line was so 
long they could do nothing with it — a line that 
reached down forty years, sometimes. Now, if you 
would avoid these difficulties, shorten your line\ Let 
it reach over one day only; for "sufficient unto the 
day is the evil thereof." To the man who is living 
weeks or years in advance of the present, God says, 
"Go back, go back to your duties. Work while the 
day lasts, and take no thought for the morrow. / am 
master down here." 



What trees are in summer, covered with leaves and 
blossoms, exhaling perfume, and filled with merry 
birds. that sing out of their hidden choirs, are Con- 



i 1 8 Best Thoughts of 

science, Veneration, Fear even, when they are shined 
upon by Love ; but, without love, any of these facul- 
ties is like that tree in winter, through which the wind 
whistles and the storm — gaunt, leafless, bloodless. 



11 Be ye kindly affectioned one towards another," 
does not refer to an occasional impulse, but to a re- 
servoired state of feeling, out of which the various 
parts of life ought to flow. Christian graces should 
be like Croton water, which presses from the reservoir 
on every faucet in the city. Each one should be full 
and ready for use when needed, whereas they are too 
often like a pump run down, and need a deal of work- 
ing before they can supply our need. 



Labored sermons sometimes sweep over the mind 
as winds sweep, over the sea, leaving it more troubled 
than before ; when one little hymn, child-warbled, 
would be to the soul like Christ's " Peace, be still," to 
the waves of Galilee. 



There is no class in society who can so ill afford to 
undermine the conscience of the community, or to set 
it ]oose from its moorings in the eternal sphere, 43 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 1 9 

merchants, who live upon confidence and credit. Any- 
thing which weakens or paralyzes this is taking beams 
from the foundations of the merchant's own ware- 
house. 



An oak tree for two hundred years grows solitary. 
It is bitterly handled by frosts ; it is wrestled with by 
ambitious winds, determined to give it a downfall. It 
holds fast and grows alone. " What avails all this 
sturdiness?" it saith to itself. " Why am I to stand 
here useless ? My roots are anchored in rifts of rocks; 
no herds can lie down under my shadow ; I am far 
above singing birds, that seldom come to rest among 
my leaves; I am set as a mark for storms, that bend 
and tear me ; my fruit is serviceable for no appetite ; 
it had been better for me to have been a mushroom, 
gathered in the morning for some poor man's table, 
than to be a hundred-year oak, good for nothing." 

While it yet spoke, the axe was hewing at its base. 
It died in sadness, saying as it fell, " Weary ages for 
nothing have I lived." 

The axe completed its work. By and by the trunk 
and root form the knees of a stately ship, bearing the 
country's flag around the world. Other parts form 
keel and ribs of merchantmen, and having defied the 
mountain storms, they now equally resist the thunder 



1 20 Best Thoughts of 

of the waves and the murky threat of scowling hur- 
ricanes. Other parts are laid into floors, or wrought 
into wainscoting, or carved for frames of noble pic- 
tures, or fashioned into chairs that embosom the weak- 
ness of old age. Thus the tree, in dying, came not to 
its end, but to its beginning of life. It voyaged the 
world. It grew to parts of temples and dwellings. It 
held upon its surface the soft tread of children and the 
tottering steps of patriarchs. It rocked in the cradle. 
It swayed the limbs of age by the chimney-corner, 
and heard, secure within, the roar of those old, un- 
wearied tempests that once surged about its mountain 
life. Thus, after its growth, its long uselessness, its 
cruel prostration, it became universally helpful, and 
did by its death what it could never have done by its 
life. For, so long as it was a tree and belonged to 
itself, it was solitary and useless ; but when it gave up 
its own life and became related to others, then its 
true life began. 

How solemn is that sentence of Christ, " And I, if 
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
me " ! Not while he lived ; not by his direct force, 
but only when pierced, broken, slain, buried, should 
his influence issue forth, and death should become the 
throne of his power. So will it be with us if we are 
Christ's. Paradoxes upon this truth lie all through 
the New Testament; and one may walk on them, like 



Henry Ward Beecher. 121 

stepping-stones, from side to side. Sorovv is joy. 
Death is life. Down is up. Weakness is strength. 
Loss is gain. Defeat is victory. The world's might- 
iest men, the very monarchs of its joy, were they who 
died deaths daily. 



" I can forgive, but I cannot forget," is only another 
way of saying, "/ will not forgive." A forgiveness 
ought to be like a cancelled note, torn in two and 
burned up, so that it never can be shown against the 
man. 



Next to victory, there is nothing so sweet as defeat, 
if only the right adversary overcomes you. 

When we are pierced with afflictions, the way is 
not to go to God and say, " Take away this thorn ! " 
God says, " No. I put it there to bleed you where 
you are plethoric." 

Suffering well borne is better than suffering re- 
moved. Suffering did not slip in, as theologians 
make so many things to have done, at the fall ; but it 
is a part of God's original method. I know enough 
of gardening to understand that if I would have a tree 
grow upon its south side I must cut off the branches 
there. Then all its forces go to repairing the injury, 
and twenty buds shoot out where otherwise there 



i 2 2 Best Thoughts of 

would have Deen but one. When we reach the garden 
above, we shall find that out of those very wounds 
over which we sighed and groaned on earth, havev 
sprung verdant branches, bearing precious fruit, a 
thousand fold. 



Suffering, in this world, is both remedial and 
penal. When it is rightly received it is remedial. 
When it is resisted, it becomes penal to him who 
resists, and admonitory to the spectator. 

Suffering is the jarring of the faculties of the mind 
one upon another, and it never will cease till they are 
all tuned to harmony. There are two ways of escap- 
ing from suffering ; the one by rising above the causes 
of conflict, the other by sinking below them ; for 
there is quiet in the soul whenever all its faculties 
are harmonized about any centre. The one is the 
religious method ; the other is the vulgar, worldly 
method. The one is called Christian elevation ; the 
other stoicism. 



God's promises are the comfort of my life. With- 
out them I could not stand for an hour in the whirl 
and eddy of things, in the sweep and surge of the 
nations; but I cannot tell how he will fulfil them, any 
more than \ can tell from just what quarter the first 



Henry Ward Beec her. 123 

flock of bluebirds will come in the spring. Yet I am 
sure that the spring will come upon the wings of ten 
thousand birds. 



Let every man come to God in his own way. God 
made you on purpose, and me on purpose, and he 
does not say to you, " Repent, and feel as Deacon A. 
feels," or, " Repent, and feel as your minister feels," 
but, " Come just as you are, with your mind, and 
heart, and education, and circumstances." 

You are too apt to feel that your religious experi- 
ence must be the same as others have; but where will 
you find analogies for this? Certainly not in nature. 
God's works do not come from his hand like coins 
from the mint. It seems as if it were a necessity that 
each one should be in some sort distinct from every 
other. No two leaves on the same tree are precisely 
alike; no two buds on one bush have the same un- 
folding, nor do they seek to have. 

What if God should command the flowers to appear 
before him, and the sunflower should come bending 
low with shame because it was not a violet, and the 
violet should come striving to lift itself up to be like 
a sunflower, and the lily should seek to gain the bloom 
pf the rose, and the rose the whiteness of the lily; ancl 



124 B es t Thoughts of 

so, each one, disdaining itself, should seek to grow into 
the likeness of the other. God would say, " Stop, 
foolish flowers! I gave you your own forms, and 
hues, and odors, and I wish you to bring what you 
have received. O sunflower, come as a sunflower; 
and you, sweet violet, come as a violet; and let the 
rose bring the rose's bloom, and the lily the lily's 
whiteness." Perceiving their folly, and ceasing to 
long for what they had not, violet and rose, lily and 
geranium, mignonette and anemone, and all the floral 
train, would come, each in its own loveliness, to send 
up its fragrance as incense, and all to wreathe them- 
selves in a garland of beauty about the throne of God. 

Now, God speaks to you as to the flowers, and 
says, n Come with the form and nature that I gave 
you. If you are made a violet, come as a violet. If 
you are a rose, come as a rose. If you are a shrub, 
do not desire to be a tree. Let everything abide in 
the nature which I gave it, and grow to the full ex- 
cellence that is contained in that nature." 

The popular impression is that grace is designed 
to change men from nature. No. They are sinful 
simply because they have deviated from their true 
nature, or fallen short of it. Grace is given to bring 
out the fulness of every man's nature. Not the 
nature which schoolmen write about ; but that nature 
which God thought of when he put forth man, and 



Henry Ward Beecher. 125 

pronounced him a child of God, bearing his Father's 
likeness. 



Men are not so much mistaken in desiring to ad- 
vance themselves as in judging what will be an ad- 
vance, and what the right method of it. An ambi- 
tion which has conscience in it will always be a 
laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the 
road, and bridge the chasms between itself and emi- 
nent success by the most faithful and minute perform- 
ances of duty. The liberty to go higher than we are 
is given only when we have fulfilled amply the duty 
of our present sphere. Thus men are to rise upon 
their performances, and not upon their discontent. 
And this is the secret and golden meaning of the com- 
mand to be content in whatever sphere we are placed. 
It is not to be the content of indifference, of indo- 
lence, of unambitious stupidity, but the content of 
industrious fidelity. When men are building the 
foundations of vast structures, they must needs labor 
far below the surface, and in disagreeable conditions. 
But every course of stone which they lay raises them 
higher; and at length, when they reach the surface, 
they have laid such solid work under them that they 
need not fear now to carry up their walls, through 
towering stories, till they overlook the whole neigh- 



126 Best Thoughts of 

borhood. A man proves himself fit to go higher who 
shows that he is faithful where he is. A man that will 
not do well in his present place, because he longs to 
be higher, is fit neither to be where he is nor yet 
above it: he is already too high, and should be put 
lower. 



Many people use their refinements as a spider uses 
his web — to catch the weak upon, that they may be 
mercilessly devoured. Why not, rather, as the silk- 
worm uses its web? It lives to spin it, and dies that 
it may yield it for others' benefit. 

It is not wrong that men who have intellectual 
powers and tastes like ours should become agreeable 
to us; but that those who have them not should 
become to us disagreeable is wrong. Every man 
should use his intellect, not as those who study in 
their libraries, when all the world is asleep, use their 
lamps, for their own seeing only ; but as light-houses 
use their lanterns, that those who are far off upon the 
deep may see the shining, and learn their way. God 
appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's 
weaknesses. 



A religious life is not a thing which spends itself 
like a bright bubble on the river's surface, It is 



Henry Ward Beee her. I27 

rather like the river itself, which widens continually, 
and is never so broad or so deep as at its mouth, 
where it rolls into the ocean of eternity. 



Men are afraid of slight outward acts which will 
injure them in the eyes of others, while they are heed- 
less of the damnation which throbs in their souls in 
hatreds, and jealousies, and revenges. 

They are more troubled by the outburst of a sinful 
disposition than by the disposition itself. It is not 
the evil, but its reflex effect upon themselves, that 
they dread. It is the love of approbation, arid not 
the conscience, that enacts the part of a moral sense 
in this case. If a man covets, he steals. If a man 
has murderous hate, he murders. If a man broods 
dishonest thoughts, he is a knave. If a man harbors 
sharp and bitter jealousies, envies, hatreds, though he 
never express them by his tongue, or shape them by 
his hand, they are there. Society, to be sure, is less 
injured by their latent existence than it would be by 
their overt forms. But the man himself is as much 
injured by the cherished thoughts of evil, in his own 
soul, as by the open commission of it, and sometimes 
even more. For evil brought out ceases to disguise 
itself, and seems as hideous as it is. But evil that 



128 Best Thoughts of 

lurks and glances through the soul avoids analysis 
and evades detection. 

There are many good-seeming men who, if all their 
day's thoughts and feelings were to be suddenly de- 
veloped into acts, visible to the eye, would run from 
themselves as men in earthquakes run from the fiery 
gapings of the ground and sulphurous cracks that 
open the way to the uncooled centre of perdition. 



Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is 
the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A 
proud man is seldom a grateful man for he never 
thinks he gets as much as he deserves. When any 
mercy falls, he says, " Yes, but it ought to be more. 
It is only manna as large as a coriander-seed, whereas 
it ought to be like a baker's loaf." 

How base a pool God's mercies fall into, when 
they plash down into such a heart as that ! 

If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me 
there were particles of iron in it, I might look for 
them with my eyes, and search for them with my 
clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them ; but let 
me take a magnet and sweep through it, and how 
would it draw to itself the almost invisible particles, 
by the mere power of attraction ! The unthankful 
heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mer- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 129 

cies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the 
day, and as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find 
in every hour some heavenly blessings ; only the iron 
in God's sand is gold. 



There are many Christians who, all their life long, 
carry their hope as a boy carries a bird's nest con- 
taining an unfledged bird that can scarcely peep, 
much less sing — a poor, fledgeless hope. 



We must not make the ideas of contentment and 
aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. 
A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it 
is time to rise. A bird that sits patiently while it 
broods its eggs flies bravely afterwards, leading up its 
timid young. And both flying and resting are but 
parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the 
Gospel is aspiration. It is to the human heart what 
spring is to the earth ; making every root, and bud, 
and bough desire to be more. 



Repentance is neither base nor bitter. It is good 
rising up out of evil. It is the resurrection of your 
thoughts out of graves of lust. Repentance is the 



130 Best Thoughts of 

turning of the soul from the way of midnight to the 
point of the coming sun. Darkness drops from the 
face, and silver light dawns upon it. Do not live, 
day by day, trying to repent, but fearing the struggle 
and the suffering. Deferred repentance, in generous 
natures, is a greater pain than would be the sorrow 
of real repentance. Manly regret for wrong never 
weakens, but always strengthens the heart. As some 
plants of the bitterest root have the whitest and 
sweetest blossoms, so the bitterest wrong has the 
sweetest repentance — which, indeed, is only the soul 
blossoming back to its better nature. 



Christ never seems to us so sweet and glorious 
as when he orbs himself over the sea of our sinfulness 
and ingratitude. 



Not parties, but principles. Let us be of no party 
but God's party, and use all other agencies as we use 
railroad cars — travelling upon one train as far as it 
will take us in the right direction, and then leaving it 
for another. 



When we think of the labor required to rear the 
few that are in our households, — the weariness, the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 3 1 

anxiety, the burden of life, — how wonderful seems 
God's work ! for he carries heaven, and earth, and all 
realms in his bosom. 

Many think that God takes no thought for any- 
thing less than a star or a mountain, and is unmindful 
of the little things of life ; but when I go abroad, the 
first thing which I see is the grass beneath my feet, 
and, nestling in that, flowers smaller yet, and, lower 
still, the mosses with their inconspicuous blooms, 
which beneath the microscope glow with beauty. 
And if God so cares for "the grass of the field, which 
to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven," shall 
he not much more care for the minutest things of 
your life, " O ye of little faith " ? 



Every child walks into existence through the 
golden gate of love, else it would seem wonderful that 
the helpless thing should be born. Yet children are 
not playthings, as we too often seem to think they 
are — mere gifts of God to fill up the hours with cheer. 
They were surely meant to be a pleasure to us, but 
that is not the final end. Nor were they meant to be 
cares and burdens alone. To speak of them as if they 
were shackles and fetters upon our freedom ; always 
in the way ; " children, children, everywhere," is a 
shame and a sin. They are to be regarded as a part 



132 Best Thoughts of 

of our education. Men cannot be developed perfectly 
who have not been compelled to bring children up to 
manhood. You might as well say that a tree is a per- 
fect tree without leaf or blossom as to say that a man 
is a man who has gone through life without experienc- 
ing the influences that come from bending down, 
and giving one's self up to those who are helpless and 
little. 

Children make men better citizens. When your 
own child comes in from the street, and has learned 
to swear from the boys congregated there, it is a very 
different thing to you from what it was when you 
heard the profanity of those boys as you passed them. 
Now it makes you feel that you are a stockholder in 
the public morality. Of what use would an engine 
be to a ship, if it were lying loose in the hull ? It 
must be fastened to it with bolts and screws, before 
it can propel the vessel. Now, a childless man is like 
a loose engine. A man must be bolted and screwed 
to the community before he can work well for its ad- 
vancement ; and there are no such screws and bolts 
as children. 



A great deal of our heart-life is cryptogamous— 
mosses and inconspicuous blooms hidden in the grass, 
thoughtlets, the intents of the heart. We are hardly 



Henry Ward Beec her. 133 

aware of this life ; but as God sees in winter all the 
flowers which are yet sleeping beneath the soil, so he 
sees all the' hidden feelings of our hearts. He knows 
every root, and what will spring from it, and compre- 
hends its intents, which are yet but germs, as well as 
its thoughts, which have already blossomed. 



Some people think black is the color of heaven, 
and that the more they can make their faces look like 
midnight, the more evidence they have of gace. But 
God, who made the sun and the flowers, never sent 
me to proclaim to you such a lie as that. We are 
told to "rejoice in the Lord always." What then ? 
" And again I say, Rejoice." Thus, in a message in 
which there was time for but two things, both of 
them were joy. The test of your Christian character 
should be, that you are a joy-bearing agent to the 
world. 



The discipline of this world is to take a creature 
born in a physical condition, and to develop in him 
the higher life of the affections, until he can use 
the inward faculties, instead of the outward senses, 
to recognize truth. This is called faith ; and, in- 
stead of faith's being a difficult thing, a man has to 



134 Best Thoughts of 

throw tne dead wood of logic and of scepticism right 
across the current of his life to prevent him from 
exercising it. 



Do not come to me, and tell me you are fit to join 
the church because you love to pray morning and 
night. Tell me what your praying has done for you ; 
and then call your neighbors, and let me hear what 
they think it has done for you. 



If a thing reflects no light, it is black ; if it reflects 
part of the rays, it is blue, or indigo, or red ; but if it 
reflects them all, it is white. If we are like Christ, 
we shall seek, not to absorb, but to reflect the light 
which falls upon us from heaven upon others, and 
thus we shall become pure and spotless ; for this is 
the meaning of the " white robes " which the saints 
wear in glory. 



A babe is a mother's anchor. She cannot swing 
far from her moorings. And yet a true mother 
never lives so little in the present as when by the 
side of the cradle. Her thoughts follow the im- 
agined future of her child. That babe is the boldest 
of pilots, and guides her fearless thoughts down 



Henry Ward Beecher. 135 

through scenes of coming years. The old ark never 
made such voyage as the cradle daily makes. 



With every child we lose we see deeper into life, 
as with every added lens we pierce farther the sky. 



God will accept your first attempt, not as a per- 
fect work, but as a beginning. The beginning is 
the promise of the end. The seed always whispers 
" oak," though it is going into the ground, acorn. I 
am sure that the first little blades of wheat are just 
as pleasant to the farmer's eyes as the Whole field 
waving with grain. 



We grieve that our days are so inharmonious. 
Our hearts are continually going in and out, as it 
were, of eclipses. Yesterday jostles do-day, and to- 
morrow will carry them both away captive. 



May God make us patient to live. Not that we 
should not have aspirations ; but till the flying comes, 
let us brood contentedly upon our nests, 



136 Best Thoughts of 

When Allston died, he left many pictures which 
were mostly sketches, yet with here and there a part 
finished up with wonderful beauty. So I think 
Christians go to heaven with their virtues mostly in 
outline, only here and there a part completed. But 
H that which is in part shall be done away," and God 
shall finish the pictures in his own forms and colors. 



Every use of the past which leaves you with the 
feeling of the past is a wrong use. If you take the 
suffering and death of Christ in the old Jerusalem 
aright, they will lead you to the New Jerusalem, 
where he ever liveth to make intercession for us. 
Because the Bible came to us from the past, we 
are not to seek God backwards, as if Christ were 
living eighteen hundred years ago, and Jehovah, 
wrapped in the mantle of four thousand years, dwelt 
upon Sinai. God is the eternal now, and we are to 
look up and forward for the ever-living Saviour. 



A Christian man's life is laid in the loom of time 
to a pattern which he does not see, but God does ; 
and his heart is a shuttle. On one side of the loom 
is sorrow, and on the other is joy ; and the shuttle, 
struck alternately by each, flies back and forth, carry- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 137 

ing the thread, which is white or black as the pat- 
tern needs; and in the end, when God shall lift up 
the finished garment, and all its changing hues shall 
glance out, it will then appear that the deep and 
dark colors were as needful to beauty as the bright 
and high colors. 



No man is perfect. The ideal man is the whole 
Christian brotherhood. That alone presents God's 
idea in the creation of man. 



What wonderful provision God has made for us, 
spreading out the Bible into types of nature ! 

What if every part of your house should begin 
to repeat the truths which have been committed to 
its symbolism ? The lowest stone would say, in si- 
lence of night, " Other foundation can no man lay." 
The corner-stone would catch the word, " Christ is 
the corner-stone." The door would add, " I am the 
door." The taper burning by your bedside would 
stream up a moment to tell you, " Christ is the light 
of the world." If you gaze upon your children, they 
reflect from their sweetly-sleeping faces the words of 
Christ, " Except ye become like little children." If, 
waking, you look towards your parents' couch, from 



1 38 Best Thoughts of 

that sacred place God calls himself your father and 
your mother. Disturbed by the crying of your 
children, who are affrighted in a dream, you rise to 
soothe them, and hear God saying, " So will I wipe 
away all tears from your eyes in heaven." Returning 
to your bed, you look from the window. Every star 
hails you, but, chiefest, "the bright and morning 
Star." By and by, flaming from the east, the flood 
of morning bathes your dwelling, and calls you forth 
to the cares of the day, and then you remember that 
God is the sun, and that heaven is bright with his 
presence. . Drawn by hunger, you approach the 
table. The loaf whispers as you break it, " Broken 
for you," and the wheat of the loaf sighs, " Bruised 
and ground for you." The water that quenches your 
thirst says, " I am the water of life." If you wash 
your hands, you can but remember the teachings of 
spiritual purity. If you wash your feet, that hath 
been done sacredly by Christ as a memorial. The 
very roof of your dwelling hath its utterance, and 
bids you look for the day when God's house shall 
receive its top-stone. 

Go forth to your labor, and what thing can you 
see that hath not its message ? The ground is full 
of sympathy. The flowers have been printed with 
teachings. The trees, that only seem to shake their 
leaves in sport, are framing divine sentences. The 



Henry Ward Beec her. 139 

birds tell of heaven with their love-warblings in the 
green twilight. The sparrow is a preacher of truth. 
The hen clucks and broods her chickens, unconscious 
that to the end of the world she is part and parcel 
of a revelation of God to man. The sheep that bleat 
from the pastures, the hungry wolves that blink in 
the forest, the serpent that 'glides noiselessly in the 
grass, the raven that flies heavenly across the field, 
the lily over which his shadow passes, the plough, 
the sickle, the wain, the barn, the flail, the threshing- 
floor, all of them are consecrated priests, unrobed 
teachers, revelators that see no vision themselves, 
but that bring to us thoughts of truth, contentment, 
hope, and love. All are ministers of God. The 
whole earth doth praise him and show forth his 
glory ! 



Dr. Kane, finding a flower under the Humboldt 
glacier, was more affected by it because it grew be- 
neath the lip and cold bosom of the ice than he would 
have been by the most gorgeous garden bloom. So 
some single struggling grace, in the heart of orie far 
removed from divine influences, may be dearer to God 
than a whole catalogue of virtues in the life of one 
more favored of Heaven, 



140 Best Thoughts of 

* Let us interrupt the flow of the weeK, and rear 
up another Sabbath in the middle of it. And, as 
those who swim mighty streams do stop, panting, to 
rest upon some midway rock ere they plunge again 
into the tide, so let us rest here, lifted up above the 
tumult of earthly care, and gain strength, before we 
go down again into the- dark ford, for the farther 
shore — the Sabbath. 



If a bell were hung high in heaven which the angels 
swung whenever a man was lost, how incessantly 
would it toll in days of prosperity for men gone down, 
for honor lost, for integrity lost, and for manhood lost, 
beyond recall ! But in times of disaster the sounds 
would intermit, and the angels looking down would 
say, " He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that 
loseth his life for my sake shall find it" 



Do you ask me whether I would help a slave to 
gain his freedom ? I answer, I would help him with 
heart, and hand, and voice. I would do for him what 
I shall wish I had done, when, having lost his dusky 
skin and blossomed into the light of eternity, he and 
I shall stand before our Master, who will say, " Inas- 

* Addressed to the church at a Wednesday evening lecture. 



Henry Ward Bee cher. 141 

much as ye did it unto him, slave as he was, ye did it 
unto me." 



There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world 
— a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. 
Men take one who has offended, and set him down 
before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch 
him, and burn his fault into him ; and when they have 
kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then — 
they forgive him. 



The man who throws his plans into the current of 
divine Providence will never want room to float his 
hull. 



Men often abstain from the grosser vices as too 
coarse and common for their appetites, while the 
vices which are frosted and ornamented are served up 
to them as delicacies. 



It is with the singing of a congregation as with the 
sighing of the wind in the forest, where the notes of 
the million rustling leaves, and the boughs striking 
upon each other, altogether make a harmony, no 
matter what be the individual discords. 



142 Best Thoughts of 

Laws and institutions are constantly tending to 
gravitate. Like clocks, they must be occasionally 
cleansed, and wound up, and set to true time 



Many people are afraid to embrace religion, for 
fear they shall not succeed in maintaining it. 

Does the spring say, " I will not come unless I can 
bring all fruits and sheaves under my wings?" No. 
She casts down loving glances in February, and in 
March she ventures near in mild days, but is beaten 
back and overthrown by storm and wind. Yet she 
returns, and finally yields the earth to April, far 
readier for life than she found it. The rains are still 
cold, but the grass is growing green, and the buds are 
swelling. In May the air is yet chilly, but it has the 
odor of flowers, and every day grows warmer till the 
delicious June, when all is bloom and softness, and 
even the storms have nourishment in them. Then 
come the glowing July and the fervid August, fol- 
lowed by the glorious autumn of harvest and victory ! 

And shall nature do so muqh, while we dare not 
attempt to overcome the coldness and deadness of 
our hearts, and to fill them with the summer of love ? 



When flowers are full of heaven-descended dews, 



Henry Ward JBeecher. 143 

they always hang their heads ; but men hold theirs 
the higher the more they receive, getting proud as 
they get full. 



The aster has not wasted spring and summer be- 
cause it has not blossomed. It has been all the time 
preparing for what is to follow, and in autumn it is 
the glory of the field, and only the frost lays it low. 
So there are many people who must live forty or fifty 
years, and have the crude sap of their natural dispo* 
sitions changed and sweetened before the blossoming 
time can come ; but their life has not been wasted. 



When people undertake to restrain themselves 
without knowing how, they are often worse off than 
if they had let themselves alone ; just as a stream, 
when you throw a little dam across it, bubbles and 
plunges all the more. 



Worldly joy is like the songs which peasants sing, 
full of melodies and sweet airs. Christian joy has its 
sweet airs too ; but they are augmented to harmonies, 
so that he who has it goes to heaven, not to the voice 
of a single flute, but to that of a whole band of instru- 
menrs, discoursing wondrous music. 



144 Best Thoughts of 

God puts the excess of hope in one man in order 
that it may be a medicine to the man who is de- 
spondent. 



If some cynical people had been by when God was 
making the human mind, as he took up Faith, they 
would have said, " Put in that," and as he took up 
Conscience, " Put in that," and Fear, " Put in that ;" 
but as he took up Mirthfulness, they would have 
touched his arm and said, u Don't put that in !" Fort- 
unately, such people were not the counsellors of God. 
Mirthfulness is in the mind, and you cannot get it 
out. It is the blessed spirit that God has set in the 
mind to dust it, to enliven its dark places, and to 
drive asceticism, Tike a foul fiend, out at the back 
door. It is just as good, in its place, as Conscience 
or Veneration. Praying can no more be made a sub- 
stitute for smiling than smiling can for praying. 



Do not be troubled because you have not great 
virtues. God made a milli.on spears of grass where he 
made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, 
not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough 
of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need 
not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint 



Henry Ward Beecher, 145 

I used to think the Lord's Prayer was a short 
prayer ; but, as I live longer, and see mpre of life, I 
begin to believe there is no such thing as getting 
through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to 
be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly 
prayed it, it would take him a lifetime. " Our 
Father" — there would be a wall a hundred feet high 
in just those two words to most men. If they might 
say, " Our Tyrant," or " Our Monarch," or even " Our 
Creator," they could get along with it ; but " Our 
Father " — why, a man is almost a saint who can pray 
that ! 

You read, "Thy will be done," and you say to 
yourself, "O, I can pray that ;" and all the time your 
mind goes round and round in immense circuits and 
far-off distances ; but God is continually bringing the 
circuits nearer to you, till he says : " How is it 
about your temper and your pride ? How is it about 
your business and your daily life ? w 

This is a revolutionary petition. It would make 
many a man's shop and store tumble to the ground 
to utter it. Who can stand at the end of the avenue 
along which all his pleasant thoughts and wishes are 
blossoming like flowers, and send these terrible words, 
" Thy will be done," crashing down through it ? I 
think it is the most fearful prayer to pray in the 
world. 



146 Best Thoughts of 

Every well- doer on the face of the earth is my 
blood-relation through Jesus Christ. I feel his heart 
beating right up to my ribs, and mine beating back to 
his. All the good passed away and transfigured into 
glory are mine. My own mother is not more really, 
though more tenderly mine, than is the mother of 
St. Chrysostom or St. Augustine; and I belong to 
every man at whose soul God's angel has knocked, so 
that he has received the divine life. 



When a man's pride is thoroughly subdued, it is 
like the sides of Mount Etna. It was terrible while 
the eruption lasted and the lava flowed; but when 
that is past, and the lava is turned into soil, it grows 
vineyards and olive-trees up to the very top. 



Men have different spheres. It is for some to 
evolve great moral truths, as the heavens evolve stars, 
to guide the sailor on the sea and the traveller on the 
desert ; and it is for some, like the sailor and the 
traveller, simply to be guided. 



You are in a hurry to see the world in its latter-day 
glory ; and well you may be, for you have but a little 



Henry Ward Beecher. 147 

time. But God is not in a hurry. There is no such 
thing as time with God. The world is his seed-bed. 
He has planted deep and multitudinously, and many 
things there are which have not yet come up. Some 
things are just sprouted, and some have blossomed; 
and yet, because the sheeted prairie of life is not 
covered with the flowers of love, men say, "It will 
never come. The world will be burned up first." 



The world is preparing day by day for the mil- 
lennium, but you do not see it. Every season forms 
itself a year in advance. The coming summer lays 
out her work during the autumn, and buds and roots 
are forespoken. Ten million roots are pumping in 
the streets ; do you hear them ? Ten million buds 
are forming in the axils of the leaves ; do you hear 
the sound of the saw or the hammer ? All next sum- 
mer is at work in the world, but it is unseen by us, 
and so "the kingdom of God cometh not with obser- 
vation." 



If any man is rich and powerful, he comes under 
that law of God by which the higher branches must 
take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that 
are lower ; by which the tall trees must protect the 
weak plants beneath them. 



148 Best Thoughts of 

Patriotism, in our day, is made to be an argu- 
ment for all public wrong, and all private meanness. 
For the sake of country a man is told to yield every 
thing that makes the land honorable. For the sake 
of country a man must submit to every ignominy 
that will lead to the ruin of the state through dis- 
grace of the citizen. There never was a man so 
unpatriotic as Christ was. Old Jerusalem ought to 
have been everything to him. The laws and institu- 
tions of his country ought to have been more to him 
than all the men in his country. They were not, and 
the Jews hated him ; but the common people, like 
the ocean waters, moved in tides towards his heavenly 
attraction wherever he went. 



Our children that lie in the cradle are ours, and 
bear in them those lines which shall yet make them 
to- appear, the boy like the father, and the daughter 
like the mother; and we are God's, growing up, we 
trust, into the lineaments which shall make us like 
unto him. " It doth not yet appear what we shall 
be." 



Whenever education and refinement grow away 
from the common people, they are growing towards 
selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 149 

Men who walk on tiptoe all through life, holding 
up their skirts for fear they shall touch their fellows; 
who are delicate and refined in feeling, and who ring 
all the bells of taste high up in their own belfry, 
where no one else can hear them, — these dainty 
fools* are the greatest sinners of all, for they use their 
higher faculties to serve the devil with. 



Man is God's creation. Everything else is the 
nursery and nurse of man. 



I never knew my mother. She died when I was 
three years old, that she might be an angel to me all 
my life. But one day, in after-years, turning over a 
pile of old letters in my father's study, I found a 
package of her letters to him, beginning with her first 
acquaintance with him, and coming down into her 
married life; and as I read those pages, at last I 
knew my mother. 

What these letters were to her life, that are the 
four Gospels to the life of Christ. But I remember 
that there was one letter in which she first spoke 
freely and frankly of her love. That, to me, is the 
Gospel of John. It is God's love-letter to the world. 



1 50 Best Thoughts of 

A man's purpose of life should be like a river, 
which was'born of a thousand little rills in the mount- 
ains ; and when at last it has reached its manhood in 
the plain, though, if you watch it, you shall see little 
eddies that seem as if they had changed their minds, 
and were going back again to the mountains, yet 
all its mighty current flows, changeless, to the sea. 
If you build a dam across it, in a few hours it will go 
over it with a voice of victory. If tides check it at 
its mouth, it is only that when they ebb it can sweep 
on again to the ocean. So goes the Amazon or the 
Orinoco across a continent — -never losing its way or 
changing its direction for the thousand streams that 
fall into it on the right hand and on the left, but only 
using them to increase its force, and bearing them 
onward in its resistless channel. 



A noble man compares and estimates himself by 
an idea which is higher than himself, and a mean man 
by one which is lower than himself. The one pro- 
duces aspiration ; the other, ambition. Ambition is 
the way in which a vulgar man aspires. 



From the beginning, I educated myself to speak 
along the line, and in the current of my moral con- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 151 

victions ; and though, in later days, it has carried me 
through places where there were some batterings and 
bruisings, yet I have been supremely grateful that I 
was led to adopt this course. I would rather speak 
the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to 
a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in 
it; try what it is to speak with God behind you — to 
speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which 
the Almighty draws. 



A Christian had better go to the theatre than to 
go home whining because he cant go. If it is worth 
while to do anything for Christ, it is worth while to 
do it with your head up, and with your whole heart. 



It takes only one good, thorough frost to cut all 
the flowers out of the garden — no thanks to the 
second ; so one thoroughly detected dissimulation in 
love, and honey is vinegar, and love is gall. 



O let the soul alone ! Let it go to God as best it 
may. It is entangled enough. It is hard enough for 
it to rise above the distractions which environ it. 
Let a man teach the rain how to fall, the clouds how 
to shape themselves and move their airy rounds, the 



152 Best Thoughts of 

seasons how to cherish and garner the universal abun- 
dance ; but let him not teach a soul to pray on whom 
the Holy Ghost doth brood ! 



In autumnal mornings mists settle over the Con- 
necticut Valley, and lie cold and damp upon the 
meadows and the hill-sides, and it is not till the sun 
rises and shines down warm upon them that they begin 
to move ; and then there are swayings, and wreathings, 
and openings, till at length the spirit which has tor- 
mented the valley can stay no longer, but rises and 
disappears in the air. So is it when the Sun of 
Righteousness shines upon the troubles which brood 
over our souls. Shining but a little, they only 
fluctuate ; but if the sun will shine long, they lift 
themselves and vanish in the unclouded heaven. 



Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one 
will forgive in others, and no one is without in him- 
self. 



Like a plant in the tropics which all the year round 
is bearing flowers, and ripening seeds, and letting 
them fly, so the heart is always shaking off memories 
and dropping associations. And as the wind which 



Henry Ward Beec her. 153 

serves to prostrate a plant is only a sower coming 
forth to sow its seeds, planting some of them in rock- 
crevices, some by river-courses, some among mossy 
stones, some under warm hedges, and some in garden 
and open field, — so it is with our experiences of life, 
that sway and bow us, either with joy or sorrow. 
They plant everything about us with heart-seeds. 
Thus a house becomes sacred. Every room has a 
thousand memories. Every door and window is 
clustered with associations. And when, after long 
years, we go back to the house of our infancy, faces 
look out upon us, and an invisible multitude stand in 
gate and portal to welcome us, and we hear airy voices 
speaking again the old words of our childhood. 
Every man has a silent and solitary literature written 
t by his heart upon the tables of stone in nature ; and 
next to God's finger, a man's heart writes the most 
memorable things. , 



When the people pass wise and needful laws, but 
leave them without public sentiment, it is as if a child 
were born into an exhausted receiver instead of a 
cradle. 



If there is one word that is universally significant 
of love, peace, refinement, social amenity, friendship, 



154 " Best Thoughts of 

pure society, joy, it is the table. Such power has the 
heart to clothe the most unseemly things with its 
own vines and fragrant flowers, that we have not 
only forgotten that eating is an animal act, but we 
have come to associate everything that is sweet and 
beautiful with it. We no longer think of appetite, 
but of love. It is not food, but society, that we have. 
We cover the merest animal necessities with such 
sympathies, tastes, conversations, and gayeties, that 
the table, the symbol of appetite, has cleared itself 
from all grossness, and stands in the language of the 
world as the centre of social joy. A feast becomes 
sacred to hospitality. A festival is a religious observ- 
ance. 



A man living at a hotel is like a grape-vine in a 
flower-pot — movable, carried around from place to 
place, docked at the root and short at the top. No- 
where can a man get real root-room and spread out 
his branches till they touch the morning and the even- 
ing but in his own house. 



As flowers never put on their best clothes for Sun- 
day, but wear their spotless raiment and exhale their 
p^or every day, so let your Christian life, free from 



Henry Ward Beecher. 155 

stain, ever give forth the fragrance of the love of 
God. 



When the absent are spoken of, some will speak 
gold of them, some silver, some iron, some lead, and 
some always speak dirt ; for they have a natural at- 
traction towards what is evil, and think it shows pen- 
etration in them. As a cat watching for mice does 
not look up though an elephant goes by, so they are 
so busy mousing for defects that they let great excel- 
lences pass them unnoticed. I will not say it is not 
Christian to make beads of others' faults, and tell 
them over every day ; I say it is infernal. If you 
want to know how the devil feels, you do know if you 
are such an one. 



The more important an animal is to be, the lower 
is its start. Man, the noblest of all, is born lowest. 
The next thing below a babe is nothing, and the 
next thing above a man is an angel. 



Looked at without educated associations, there is 
no difference between a man in bed and a man in 
a coffin. And yet, such is the power of the heart 
to redeem the animal life, that there is nothing 



156 Best Thoughts^of 

more exquisitely refined, and pure, and beautiful, 
than the chamber of the house. The couch ! From 
the day that the bride sanctifies it to the day when 
the aged mother is borne from it, it stands clothed 
with loveliness and dignity. Cursed be the tongue 
that dares speak evil of the household bed ! By its 
side oscillates the cradle. Not far from it is the crib. 
In this sacred precinct, the mother's chamber, lies 
the heart of the family. Here the child learns its 
prayer. Hither, night by night, angels troop. It is 
the Holy of Holies. 



Wherever I find truth, I will appropriate it, for it 
is an estray from God's word, and belongs to me and 
to all. Eminent masters, parties, and sects claim 
truths as theirs, because they have most fully ex- 
pounded them ; but men never make truths ; they 
only recognize the value of this currency of God. 
They find truths as men sometimes find bills, in the 
street, and only recognize the value of that which 
other parties have drawn. 



Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner 
as to receive pleasure from it. Just as long as there 
i$ the enthusiasm of the chase they enjoy it; but 



Henry Ward Beecher. 157 

when they begin to look around, and think of set- 
tling down, they find that that part by which joy 
enters is dead in them. They have spent their lives 
in heaping up colossal piles of treasure, which stand, 
at the end, like the pyramids in the desert sands, 
holding only the dust of kings. 



God has put the veil of secrecy before the soul 
for its preservation ; and to thrust it rudely aside, 
without reason, would be suicidal. Neither here, 
nor, as I think, hereafter, will all our thoughts and 
feelings lie open to the world. 



The common school stands on the threshold of 
society, and throws each generation back to the one 
starting-point, and says to it, " Now come up* because 
of what is in you." Who can estimate the power 
of an institution that is continually evening one end 
of life, but leaving the other to shoot up as plants do 
from the common soil ? 



What would the nightingale care if the toad de- 
spised his singing? He would sing on, and leave 
the cold toad to his dank shadows. And what care 



158 Best Thoughts of 

I for the sneers of men who grovel upon earth ? 
will still sing on into the ear and bosom of God. 



Men do not avail themselves of the riches of 
God's grace. They love to nurse their cares, and 
seem as uneasy without some fret as an old friar 
would be without his hair girdle. They are com- 
manded to cast their cares upon the Lord; but, 
even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch 
them up again, and think it meritorious to walk 
burdened. They take God's ticket to heaven, and 
then put their baggage on their shoulders, and tramp, 
tramp, the whole way there afoot. 



The stream of life forks; and religion is apt to 
run in one channel and business in another. 



It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell 
your friend of his faults. If you are angry with a 
man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and 
stab him with words ; but so to love a man that you 
cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to 
speak painful truth through loving words, — that is 
friendship. But few have such friends. Our ene* 



Henry Ward Beecher. X 59 

mies usually teach us what we are, at the point of 
the sword. 



I think I heard a conversation in the leaves this 
morning, as I came to church. The buds that had 
lain all winter in their wrappings, as under roofs and 
blankets, were beginning to say to each other, '* Is 
it not March ? Is it not time for us to unfold our- 
selves, and expand our leaves in fragrance to the 
air?" 

But one tiny bud answered, " I can never unfold to 
the sun and the air these dear little leaves, that have 
lain so long in my bosom. I could not bear such pub- 
licity. I must keep their fragrance still." And the 
sun and the wind laughed ; for they knew that when 
they should shine and blow upon the bud, and fill up 
and swell those tiny leaves, it would open from the 
necessity of its nature, and that when they were swim- 
.ming in a bath of solar light, they would give out 
their odor unconsciously to every breeze. 

So many a heart says, " I could not bear to have 
my sweet buds of feeling exposed, through profession 
of Christianity, to the gaze of the world. I will keep 
them safely hid in my bosom, and be a Christian in 
secret." But when the winds of heaven blow upon 
them, and the sun of God's love shines, they will be- 



160 Best Thoughts of 

come vocal, and must needs give themselves expres- 
sion. 



There are many here to-day who know not yet 
what fruit they shall bear; may the gracious Hus- 
bandman take care of all these tender shoots and buds 
of spring. And there are those who are in the sum- 
mer of their growth, and who spread abroad their 
leaves and expand their blossoms ; may God grant 
them the gracious rains of heaven, that they may be 
nourished, and sustained, and brought to all perfec- 
tion. And there are those who stand in autumn, with 
clustering fruits and glowing colors; may He minister 
to them all those influences which are needful for the 
autumn of their experience, and bring them gloriously 
to the end of the harvest. And there are those who 
are in life's winter, and whose leaves have fallen, and 
through whose unclothed boughs the sunlight shines ; 
O thou who art the God of winter as well as of sum- 
mer, be very near to them till thou dost take them to 
the land where no winter comes ! 



Amid our imperfect utterances, let us comfort our- 
selves with the thought of that realm where thought 
shall speak without the need of a tongue, and feeling 



Henry Ward Beecher. 161 

shall speak, and the whole life shall be an anthem of 



praise. 



Our most exalted feelings are not meant to be the 
common food of daily life. Contentment is more 
satisfying than exhilaration ; and contentment means 
simply the sum of small and quiet pleasures. We 
ought not to seek too high joys. We may be bright 
without transfiguration. The eVen flow of constant 
cheerfulness strengthens ; while great excitements, 
driving us with fierce speed, both rack the ship and end 
often in explosions. If we were just ready to break 
out of the body with delight,. I know not but we 
should disdain many things important to be done. 
Low measures of feeling are better than ecstasies for 
ordinary life. God sends his rains in gentle drops, 
else' flowers would be beaten to pieces. 



Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and 
man's obligations to God would be unchanged. He 
would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and 
his guide would be gone ; he would have the same 
voyage to make, only his compass and chart would be 
overboard. 



1 62 Best Thoughts of 

Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The 
universe is God's because he loves. 



* Christian brethren, in heaven you are known by 
the name of Christ. On earth, for convenience* sake, 
you are known by the name of Presbyterians, Epis- 
copalians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and the like. 
Let me speak the language of heaven, and call you, 
simply, Christians. Whoever of you has known the 
name of Christ, and feels Christ's life beating within 
him, is invited to remain, and sit with us at the table 
of the Lord. 



f My friends, my heart is large to-day. I am like 
a tree upon which rains have fallen till every leaf is 
covered with drops of dew; and no wind goes through 
the boughs, but I hear the pattering of some thought 
of joy and gratitude. I love you all more than ever 
before. You are crystalline to me. Your faces are 
radiant ; and I look through your eyes as through 
windows into heaven. I behold in each of you an im- 
prisoned angel, that is yet to burst forth, and to love 
and shine in the better sphere. 

* Invitation to the communion service. 

f At communion, when one hundred were added to the church. 



Henry Ward Beet her. 163 

The whole earth is like a caldron, boiling and seeth- 
ing with human passions. Man is at war with man, 
and everywhere are rage and animosity. When, from 
God's fatherhood, shall come the truth of our brother- 
hood ? Lord Jesus, what hast thou done since thou 
wentest away? Hast thou forgotten thine errand 
hither ? Art thou not weary of this globe, which 
swings about thy throne on its bitter path with an- 
thems of pain and woe ? Hasten the time when the 
whole world, enchoired by love, shall go its golden 
way, singing thy praise and its joy ! 



The real man is one who always finds excuses for 
others, but never excuses himself. 



Men's convictions of sin differ with their charac- 
ters. One man says, " In such a sermon, a lion-iike 
conviction sprang out upon me, and seized my soul 
in its grasp, and had nearly torn it asunder." And 
another says, " The twilight of God's love fell upon 
me; but when the eclipse was over, the sun shone 
out again, and I was happy." Terror, or only sad- 
ness, anguish, grief and love, are all alike really con- 
viction. 



1 64 Best Thoughts of 

We have known men, upon whose grounds were 
old magnificent trees of centuries' growth, lifted up 
into the air with vast breadth, and full of twilight at 
midday, who cut down all these mighty monarchs, 
and cleared the ground bare ; and then, when the des- 
olation was completed, and the fierce summer gazed 
full into their faces with its fire, they bethought them- 
selves of shade, and forthwith set out a generation of 
thin, shadowless sticks, and pined and waited till they 
should stretch out their boughs with protection, and 
darken the ground with grateful shadow. Such folly 
is theirs who refuse the tree of life, the shadow of the 
Almighty, and sit, instead, under feeble trees of their 
own planting, whose tops will never be broad enough 
to shield them, and whose boughs will never discourse 
to them the music of the air. 

The mountains lift their crests so high that weary 
clouds, which have no rest in the sky, love to come 
to them, and, wrapping about their tops, distil their 
moisture upon them. Thus mountains hold com- 
merce with God's invisible ocean, and, like good men, 
draw supplies from the unseen. So, in times of 
drought below, the rocks are always wet, the moun- 
tain moss is always green, the seams and crevices are 
always dripping, and veins are throbbing a full pulse, 
while all the summer down in the plains faints for 
want of moisture. In some virgin gorge, unwedded 



Henry Ward Beec her. 165 

by the sun, cold rills bubble up and issue forth upon 
their errand. Could one who would build mV*iR>use 
below but meet these springs in the mountains, and 
lay his artificial channels to their very sources, he 
would not know when drought came, for they never 
grow dry so long as clouds brood the mountain-tops. 
Day and night they gush and fall with liquid plash, an 
unheard music, except when thirsty birds, to whose 
song the rivulet has been a bass, stoop to drink at 
their crystal edges. 

Artificial cisterns dry up and crack for dryness ; but 
this mountain-fountain comes, night and day, with 
cool abundance. While others with weary strokes 
force up from deep wells a penurious supply of turbid 
water, he that has joined himself to the mountain- 
spring has its voice continually in his dwelling, night 
and day, summer and winter, without work or stroke 
of laboring pump, clear, sweet, and cheerful, running 
of its own accord, and singing at its work, more musi- 
cal than any lute, and bringing in its song suggestions 
of its home — the dark recess, the rock which was its 
father, the cloud which was its mother, and the teem- 
ing heaven bright and broad above both rock and 
cloud. 

With such a spring, — near, accessible, urging itself 
upon eye and ear, — how great would be his folly who 
should abandon it, and fill his attic with a leaded 



1 66 Best Thoughts of 

cistern, which forever leaked when full, and was dry- 
when it did not leak ! Yet this is what we have done. 
We have forsaken God, " the fountain of living waters, 
and hewed us out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can 
hold no water." 



Happiness is not the end of life; character is. This 
world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg- 
piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are 
dust, and shavings, and boards, and saws, and files, 
and rasps, and sand-papers. The perfect instrument 
and the music will be hereafter. 



God asks no man whether he will accept life. 
That is not the choice. You must take it. The 
only choice is how. 



The other day, in walking down the street, a little 
beggar-boy, — or one who might have begged, so rag- 
ged was he, — having discovered that I loved flowers, 
came and put into my hand a faded little sprig which 
he had somewhere found. I did not look directly at 
the scrawny, withered branch, but beheld it through 
the medium of the boy's heart, seeing what he would 
have given, not what he gave ; and so looking, the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 167 

shrivelled stem was laden with blossoms of beauty 
and odor. And if I, who am cold, and selfish, and 
ignorant, receive so graciously the offering of a poor 
child, with what tender joy must our heavenly Father 
receive the sincere tributes of his creatures when he 
looks through the medium of his infinite love and 
compassion ! 

Christ does not say, "Take the noblest things of 
life, and bring them perfect to me, and I will receive 
them." He says, "Take the lowest and most dis- 
agreeable thing; and if you bring it cheerfully, for 
my sake, it shall be to me a flower of remembrance, 
and I will press it in the book of life, and keep it 
forever." 

Go„ then, search for flowers to bring to Christ ; and 
if you cannot find even road-side or "pasture weeds, — 
if there are but nettles and briers, and you are willing 
for his sake to thrust your hand into the thorn-bush, 
and bring a branch from thence, he will take it lov- 
ingly, and cherish it evermore. 



Let me fall into the hands of God, and not of 
man ; yet even there, such is the heart's weakness 
that we must often cry out, " O remember that we 
are but dust ! " Let God deal with me in the street, 
in the door-yard, — yea, let him come into the house, 



1 68 Best Thoughts of 

and deal with me in the parlor, — but let him not come 
into my chamber, and deal with me in the cradle. 
Then he is a terrible God ; and I tremble, and shrink 
away from his presence. 



There is an anger that is damnable ; it is the anger 
of selfishness. There is ari anger that is majestic as 
the frown of Jehovah's brow; it is the anger of truth 
and love. 

If a man meets with injustice, it is not required 
that he shall not be roused to meet it ; but if he is 
angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is 
sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are. 



There are men who imagine they should do well 
enough if they could throw the Bible overboard, and 
the ministers after it, and sink the whole church in 
the sea. It is as if a man with a shattered limb 
should think to better himself by thrusting the doc- 
tors and their instruments out of doors. They did 
not break his leg, but only propose to set it. Under 
the hand of the poorest of them, the limb will be 
better than if the shattered bone were left to heal 
unsplintered. 



It is supposed that if a man is a Christian, he 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 69 

must perform certain professional duties which are 
no more to be expected of a man who is not a Chris- 
tian than a lawyer's duties are expected of a me- 
chanic. Now, all the great duties of a Christian life 
are no more incumbent upon Christians than upon 
other men ; for men are bound to be and do right on 
the religious scale of rectitude, not because they are 
Christians, but because they are men. Religious ob- 
ligations took hold of us when we were born. They 
waited for us as the air did. They have their sources 
back of volition, back of consciousness, just as at- 
traction has. Though a man declares himself an 
atheist, it in no way alters his obligations. Right and 
wrong do not spring from the nature of the church. 
Obligation lies deeper than that. The church is a 
mere organization to help a man fulfil his duties ; it 
is not the source from whence those duties sprang. 
If there is anything in your business, or your char- 
acter, which you would feel that you ought to change 
if you were a Christian, you ought to change it now. 
It is as much the worldling's duty to love God and to 
obey his laws as it is the Christian's. An unpraising 
heart ! You do not need to have been baptized, to 
be damned, if you have that. 



As we do not Keep tinder in every box in the 



1 70 * Best Thoughts of 

house, so we do not keep the sense of anger in every 
faculty. When one comes against the door of some 
faculties with an injury, we look over the railing and 
say,— 

" I '11 forgive you for that, for you did not get in." 

But by and by, when the faculty where we are 
sensitive is entered, then we grind our teeth and 
say, — 

" I could have forgiven him for anything but 
that!" 

We must not arrogate to ourselves a spirit of for- 
giveness until we have been touched to the quick 
where we are sensitive, and borne it meekly ; and 
meekness is not mere white-facedness, a mere con- 
templative virtue ; it is maintaining peace and pa- 
tience in the midst of pelting provocations. 



Mozart and Raphael ! As long as the winds 
make the air give forth sounds, and the sun paints 
the earth with colors, so long shall the world not let 
these names die. 



See to it that each hour's feelings, and thoughts, 
and actions are pure and true ; then will your life be 
such. The mightiest maze of magnificent harmonies 



Henry Ward Beecher. 171 

that ever a Beethoven gave to the world is but single 
notes, and all its complicated and interlacing strains 
are resolvable into individualities. The wide pasture 
is but separate spears of grass ; the sheeted bloom of 
the prairies but isolated flowers. 



The vertical power of Christianity with Christians 
will measure its horizontal power in the world. 



We rejoice in God, since he has taught us that 
everything which is true in us is but a faint expres- 
sion of what is in him. And thus all our joys become 
to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a 
dream of that nobler life to which we shall awaken 
when we die. 



We are apt to believe in Providence so long as we 
have our own way ; but if things go awry, then we 
think, if there is a God, he is in heaven and not on 
earth. 

The cricket in the spring builds his little house in 
the meadow, and chirps for joy, because all is going 
so well with him. But when he hears the sound of 
the plough a few furrows off, and the thunder of the 



172 Best Thoughts of 

oxen's tread, then the skies begin to look dark, and 
his heart fails him. The plough comes craunching 
along, and turns his dwelling bottom side up, and as 
he goes rolling over and over without a home, he says : 

" O the foundations of the world are destroyed, 
and everything is going to ruin !" 

But the husbandman who walks behind the plough, 
singing and whistling as he goes, does he think the 
foundations of the world are breaking up ? Why, he 
does not so much as know there was any house or 
cricket there. He thinks of the harvest which is to 
follow the track of the plough ; and the cricket, too, 
if he will but wait, will find a thousand blades of grass 
where there was but one before. 

We are like the crickets. If anything happens to 
overthrow our plans, we think all is going to ruin. 



There is always somebody to believe in any one 
who is uppermost. 



There is no greater crime than to stand between a 
man and his development; to take any law or institu- 
tion and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it 
there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses 
against it till he suffocates and dies. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 173 

We ought not to judge men by their absolute ex- 
cellence, but by the distance which they have travelled 
from the point at which they started. There are some 
men whom God has so royally endowed that they are 
like a bird sitting on the topmost branch of the forest, 
and if God says to it, " Mount up," it has nothing to 
do but to spring into the air, singing as it goes to- 
wards heaven. But others are like a bird upon the 
ground, that has to disentangle itself from the bushes, 
and then to work its way among the darkling boughs, 
before it can soar. The one may have done better 
by his outward wings, but the better inward wings of 
purpose and endeavor beat far stronger in the other, 
and bring him quite as near to God ; for God dwells 
beneath the shade as much as above the forest. 



We are all building a soul-house for eternity; yet 
with what different architecture and what various 
care ! 

What if a man should see his neighbor getting 
workmen and building materials together, and should 
say to him, " What are you building ? " and he should 
answer, " I don't exactly know. I am waiting to see 
what will come of it." And so walls rush up, and 
room is added to room, while the man looks idly on, 
and all the bystanders exclaim : " What a fool he is !" 



1 74 Best Thoughts of 

Yet this is the way many men are building their 
characters for eternity, adding room to room, without 
plan or aim, and thoughtlessly waiting to see what the 
effect will be. Such builders will never dwell in " the 
house of God, not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens." 

Many men build as cathedrals were built, the part 
nearest the ground finished ; but that part which soars 
towards heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever in- 
complete. 

A kitchen, a cellar, a bar, and a bedroom, — these 
are the whole -of some men, the only apartments in 
their soul-house. 

Many men are mere warehouses full of merchan- 
dise — the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. 
Like those houses in the lower streets of the city 
which were once family dwellings, but are now used 
for commercial purposes, there are apartments in their 
souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and 
joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and 
the rooms are filled with earthy and material things. 



He who selfishly hoards his joys, thinking thus to 
increase them, is like a man who looks at his granary, 
and says, " Not only will I protect my grain from 
mice and birds, but neither the ground nor the mill 



Henry Ward Beec her. 175 

shall have it." And so, in the spring, he walks 
around his little pit of corn, and exclaims, " How 
wasteful are my neighbors, throwing away whole hand- 
fujs of grain !" But autumn comes; and, while he 
has only his few poor bushels, their fields are yellow 
with an abundant harvest. " There is that scattereth 
and yet increaseth." 



Christians ! it is your duty not only to be good, 
but to shine ; and, of all the lights which you kindle 
on the face, Joy will reach farthest out to sea, where 
troubled mariners are seeking the shore. Even in 
your deepest griefs, rejoice in God. As waves phos- 
phoresce, let joys flash from the swing of the sorrows 
of your souls. 



In human governments, justice is central, and love 
incidental. In the divine government, love is the 
central element, and justice only incidental. God 
wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before his 
hand takes hold on justice. When the waves of 
penalty begin to come in in fearful tides, then he 
banks up against them. His goodness is the levee 
between justice and the sinful soul. 



Does love implead with God for us, as it does in 



1 j6 Best Thoughts of 

us for those we hold dear ? Does he look wistfully 
forth to see when such and such an one shall leave 
earth and come to him — as parents, waiting for 
vacation, look every hour along the road to watch 
for their children ? 

If we are Christ's, every passing day brings us 
nearer to him, and he is gathering up our treasures 
in heaven. When anything falls overboard from a 
ship upon the sea, it goes astern ; but when any- 
thing drops into the ocean of life, it is taken up 
and carried forward to wait for us. And when that 
which we call death comes, it is Christ's summons. 
He wants us to come to him. To some of us it has 
been a long voyage. A few more watches, and it 
will be ended, and there will rise the cry of " Land, 
ho ! " more rapturous than ever greeted an earthly 
shore. And then may we hear, sweeter than the 
songs of myriad angels, the voice of One who has 
longed for us, and for whom we have been home- 
sick, — the voice of our Saviour, — saying to us, 
" Welcome, ye blessed of my Father. Enter ye into 
the joy of your Lord." 



God sends Experience to paint men's portraits. 
Does some longing youth look at the settled face 
of a Washington, whose lineaments have been trans- 



Henry Ward Beecher. ijj 

mitted to us by the artist's skill, and strive to wear 
as noble a mien ? That look, — the winds of the 
Alleghanies, the trials of the Jersey winter, the 
sufferings at Cambridge, the conflicts with Con- 
gress, wrought it out ; and he who would gain it 
must pass through as stern a school. 



I sometimes go musing along the street to see 
how few people there are whose faces look as though 
any joy had come down and sung in their souls. I 
can see lines of thought, and of care, and of fear — 
money-lines, shrewd, grasping lines — but how few 
happy lines ! The rarest feeling that ever lights 
the human face is the contentment of a loving soul. 
Sit for an hour on the steps of the Exchange in 
Wall Street, and you will behold a drama which is 
better than a thousand theatres, for all the actors 
are real. 



The light falls on the skin of the Anglo-Saxon, 
and the rays are reflected, and he is white. The 
same light falls on the skin of the negro, and the 
rays are absorbed, and he is black ; and morals and 
religion, on a national scale, are modified by a re- 
flecting or non-reflecting cuticle. If the African 



i yS Rest Thoughts of 

race had been as hands6me as the Circassian, there 
would not to-day be a single slave among them. 
Beauty is omnipotent. Pards and tigers are fabled 
to have drawn the cars of the wreathed and grace- 
ful Bacchanals, in ancient song ; and to-day, among 
unsanctified men, truth and justice love beauty better 
than they love themselves. 

Whether the Africans are an inferior race or not, 
it is evident that our destiny in some respect is 
bound up with them, and the study of their interests 
is the study of our salvation. When a ship casts its 
passengers overboard in a storm, there may be sick 
and helpless ones among them, who could not for a 
moment compete with the robust swimmers ; but 
the feeblest of them, by attaching themselves to the 
swimmers, may embarrass them, and make them go 
down. So this African race, in the Omnipotent 
hand, may be the instrument for our destruction, if 
we are to be destroyed. They may cling to our feet, 
and entangle us in their final miseries. 



Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests 
and food. The philosophy of one century is the 
common sense of the next. Men are called fools, 
in one age, for not knowing what they were called 
fools for averring in the age before. We should so 



Henry Ward Beec her. 179 

live and labor in our time that what came to us as 
seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and 
that what came to us as blossom may go to them as 
fruit. This is what we mean by progress. 



Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit 
may swell. 



If men whose sympathy is strong for their fellows 
have been to churches where they have heard the 
preaching of dry doctrines, — if the tree of life has 
been to them a girdled tree, leafless, and without 
birds in its boughs, — they are very apt to ignore 
doctrine, and to go to the opposite extreme, and say, 
" It's well enough to sing hymns, and there's no harm 
in prayers, perhaps ; but the best hymns and prayers 
are to do good." It is very true that to love justice 
and to show mercy is more than all sacrifice of hymns 
and prayers ; yet, as the world goes, I have noticed 
that most men decry the one only for the sake of 
covering their neglect of the other. 



I am suspicious of that church whose members are 
one in their beliefs and opinions. When a tree is 
dead, it will lie any way ; alive it will have its own 



1 80 Best Thoughts of 

growth. When men's deadness is in the church and 
their life elsewhere, all will be alike. They can be 
cut and polished any way. When they are alive, 
they are like a tropical forest — some shooting up, like 
the mahogany tree ; some spreading, like the vine ; 
some darkling, like the shrub ; some lying, herb-like, 
on the ground ; but all obeying their own laws of 
growth, — a common law of growth variously ex- 
pressed in each, — and so contributing to the richness 
and beauty of the wood. 



It makes no difference what you call men — prince, 
peer, or slave. Man is that name of power which 
rises above them all, and gives to every one the right 
to be that which God meant he should fee. No law, 
nor custom, nor opinion, nor prejudice has the right 
to say to one man, " You may grow," and to another, 
" You may not grow," or, " You may grow in ten 
directions, and not in twenty ; " or to the strong, 
" You may grow stronger," or to the weak, "You 
may never become strong." Launched upon the 
ocean of life, like an innumerable fleet, each man may 
spread what sails God has given him, whether he be 
pinnace, sloop, brig, bark, ship, or man-of-war; and 
no commodore or admiral may signal what voyage he 
shall make or what canvas he shall carry. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 8 1 

God Has given to men the great truths of liberty 
and equality, which are like mothers' breasts, carrying 
food for ages. Let us not fear that in our land they 
shall be overthrown or destroyed. Though we may 
go through dark times, — rocking times, when we are 
seasick, — yet the day shall come when there shall be 
no more oppression, but when, all over the world, 
there shall be a common people, sitting in a common- 
wealth, having a common Bible, a common God, and 
common peace and joy in a common brotherhood ! 



The world is so fruitful that we can hardly even 
blunder without bringing forth some good. We can 
take up no scheme, however wild and impracticable, 
but it will strike off some flower or fruit from the 
tree of knowledge. 



It often happens that the coming of Christ to his 
disciples, for their relief, is that which frightens them 
most, because they do not know the extent of God's 
wardrobe ; for I think that as a king might never 
wear the same garment but once, in order to show 
his riches and magnificence, so God comes to us in all 
exigencies, but never twice alike. He sometimes 
puts on the garments of trouble ; and, when we are 
calling upon him as though he were yet in heaven, he 



1 82 Best Thoughts of 

is walking by our side; and that from which we are 
praying God to deliver us is often but God himself. 
Thus it is with us as with children who are terrified 
by their dreams in the night, and scream for their 
parents, until, fully waking, behold they are in their 
parents' arms ! 



Questions of future society are too vast to be de- 
termined by the present. Society, like life, grows 
from a principle divinely implanted, and all we can do 
is to stimulate and tend it. God never gives us the 
light which our children need ; he gives it to them. 



There are multitudes of men like the summer 
vines, which never grow even ligneous, but stretch 
out a thousand little hands to grasp the stronger 
shrubs ; and if they cannot reach them, they lie dis- 
hevelled in the grass, hoof-trodden, and beaten of 
every storm. 

It does not tarnish bright gifts to hold them in re- 
straint lest their heedless liberty should injure others. 
Men who would cheerfully forego lawful pleasures 
which injure the weak, often feel that it is reversing 
the law of growth, and the divine method, to shape 
the pattern of our life, not upon the large pattern qf 



Henry Ward Beecher, 183 

our own powers, but upon the meagre pattern of the 
ignorant, the prejudiced, and the vulgar. And yet, 
every man should learn better from the nursery, in 
which God teaches men more deep theology than all 
books contain, of the nobleness of strength nourish- 
ing weakness, of knowledge careful of ignorance, and 
of experience waiting upon childhood, and, by serv- 
ing it with all self-renunciation, gaining honor and 
greatness. As yet, the world will not understand 
that he governs whom love makes serviceable. The 
strong are few, the weak are many ; and God ap- 
points the strong to serve the weak, saying, " We, 
then, that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of 
the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one 
of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. 
For even Christ pleased not himself ; but, as, it is 
written, The reproaches of them that reproach thee 
fell on me." 



There are some who stand on a narrow strip of 
land between two dead seas, and drink their waters 
alternately. The past is filled with bitter regrets, and 
ghosts which will not be laid, but walk still to haunt 
them; and the future is filled with shadowy shapes, 
which beckon them forward to new suffering. There 
is a purgatory, and it is this: it is the point where 
good, despaired of, touches evils remembered,, 



184 Best Thoughts of 

Piety may be called the act of right growing. It 
is moving towards true attainment that constitutes it. 



Suppose a man should sail, all the boiling and 
blazing day, round and round an old Dutch ship in 
the harbor, and the next day you should see him, like 
a magnifieii fly, creeping up and down the masts, and 
spars, and exaxiimng the rigging, and you should ask 
him what he was doing, and he should answer, " I 
have heard that this ship is a dull sailer, and I want to 
look at it and see." Could he ever find out in this 
way? No. Let him weigh anchor and spread the 
canvas, and take the wind and bear away, if he would 
know how she sails. 

So, if a Christian would learn his true state, let him 
not row round and round the hull of his self-con- 
sciousness, and creep up and down the masts and 
spars of his feelings and affections; but let him spread 
the sails of resolution, and bear away on the ocean of 
duty. Then he shall know whether he be a dull or a 
fast sailer. 



Some regard religion as a sort of divine aura, which 
descends upon a man and encircles him, as silvery- 
mists enwreathe autumnal mountain-tops. There is a 



Henry Ward Beecher. 185 

sense in which this is true. No one would become a 
Christian without the direct aid of the Holy Spirit, 
any more than a bud would become a blossom with- 
out the influence of the sun; but yet, personal religion 
is the result of personal choice. 



A state in which the citizen is the pabulum of 
the state will soon have nothing left to feed on. 



The church was built to disturb the peace of man ; 
but often it does not perform its duty, for fear of 
disturbing the peace of the church. What kind of 
artillery practice would that be which declined to fire 
for fear of kicking over the gun-carriages, or waking 
up the sentinels asleep at their posts? 



A church may nave a creed that shall be like 
Jacob's ladder, uniting earth and heaven, and angels 
of exposition may run nimbly up and down upon it 
before the congregation; and yet, if there is no love 
in that church, unlike the patriarch, it will never wake 
from its sleep, or lift its head from the pile of stones 
on which it lies. 



1 86 Best Thoughts of 

Many men are swamped in the doctrines of election 
and predestination, but this is supreme impertinence. 
They are truths which belong to God, and if you are 
troubled by them, it is because you are meddling with 
what does not belong to you. You only need to 
understand that all God's agencies are to assist you in 
gaining your salvation, if you will but use them 
rightly. To doubt this is as if men in a boat, pulling 
against the tide, and, with all their efforts, going back- 
wards every hour, should by and by find the current 
turning, and see the wind springing up with it and 
filling the sails, and hear the man at the helm exclaim, 
"Row away, boys! Wind and tide are in your 
favor," and they should all say, " What shall we do 
with the oars ? Do not the wind and the tide take 
away our free agency ? " 



When Christ came, it was not necessary for him to 
teach that man was miserable, any more than it would 
be to demonstrate the presence of disease in a hospital 
of fevered, palsied patients ; for, in addition to the 
woes of the individual, the world was a tangled web 
of misery. Each year travailed in pain, and passed 
the legacy to the next, and the centuries rolled on 
with this weight of woe. And still the world looks 
desolate. The ages seem only to burden it as they 



Henry Ward Beecher. 187 

marsh over, while God's promises hang above it like 
stars, distant and cold. Yet we believe in him, and, 
like the prophets of old, we stand and cry, " How 
long, O Lord, how long ! " 



Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted 
before it is glazed. There can be no change after it 
is burned in. 



We are not sent into life as a butterfly is sent into 
summer, gorgeously hovering over the flowers, as if 
the interior spirits of the rainbow had come down to 
greet these kisses of the season upon the ground ; but 
to labor for the world's advancement, and to mould 
our characters into God's likeness, and so, through toil 
and achievement, to gain hapiness. I would rather 
break stones upon the road, if it were not for the dis- 
grace of being in a chain-gang, than to be one of those 
contemptible joy-mongers, who are so rich and so 
empty that they are continually going about to find 
something to make them happy. 



One should go to sleep at night as homesick pas- 
sengers do, saying, " Perhaps in the morning we shall 



1 88 Best Thoughts of 

see the shore." To us who are Christians, it is not a 
solemn, but a delightful thought, that perhaps nothing 
but the opaque, bodily eye prevents us from behold- 
ing the gate which is open just before us, and nothiflg 
but the dull ear prevents us from hearing the ringing 
of those bells of joy which welcome us to the heavenly 
land. That we are so near death is too good to be 
believed. 



God does not refuse to make himself known to man. 
He only will not do it by the symbolism of matter. 
He comes to us at once by the most natural course. 
We are in a transient state ; our bodies are accidental, 
and God comes to us by that which is higher and 
truer — the intuitions of the soul. 



Men's graces must get the better of their faults as 
a farmer's crops do of the weeds — by growth. When 
the corn is low, the farmer uses the plough to root up 
the weeds ; but when it is high, and shakes its palm- 
like leaves in the wind, he says, " Let the corn take 
care of them," for the dense shadow of growing corn 
is as fatal to weeds as the edge of the sickle. 



' In looking upon a congregation like this, it is nat- 

* At the close of a Sabbath evening sermon* 



Henry Ward Beecher. 189 

ural to think of you as you appear in the world; here 
a merchant, there a teacher ; here a mechanic, there 
an artist ; here a shipmaster, there a banker. But to- 
night I seem to behold you in your higher relations, 
and you stand to me like living portraits on the back- 
ground of eternity. I behold the lines of God in your 
faces. No longer are you to me men of the street, 
or of the house, but creatures of heaven ; and, like a 
flock of birds in autumn sitting upon the bough, with 
wings half-lifted, waiting for the migratory hour, I see 
you just ready to take flight for the eternal land ! 



There is dew in one flower and not in another, be- 
cause one opens its cup and takes it in, while the other 
closes itself, and the drops run off. God rains his 
goodness and mercy as wide-spread as the dew, and if 
we lack them, it is because we will not open our hearts 
to receive them. 



The great men of earth are the shadowy men, who, 
having lived and died, now live again and forever 
through their undying thoughts. Thus living, though 
their footfalls are heard no more, their voices are 
louder than the thunder, and unceasing as the flow of 
tides or air. 



190 Best Thoughts of 

Moses was not half living when he was alive. His 
real life has been since he died. The prophets seemed 
almost useless in their time. They did little for them- 
selves or for the church of that day ; but when you 
look at the life they have lived since, you shall find 
they have been God's pilots, guiding the church 
through all perils. From their black bosoms they 
sent forth the blast of his lightning and the roar of 
his thunder ; and to-day, if the church needs rebuke 
and denunciation, it is they who must hurl it. I could 
have killed old Jeremiah, if I could have got at his 
ribs ; but I should like to see the archer that could hit 
him now. Martin Luther was mighty when he lived; 
but the shadowy Luther is mightier than a regiment 
of fleshly Luthers. When he was on earth, he in some 
sense asked the pope leave to be, and the emperor 
and the elector leave to be ; he asked the stream and 
the wheat to give him sustenance for a day ; but now 
that his body is dead, — now that that rubbish is out 
of the way, — he asks no leave of pope, or elector, or 
emperor, but is the monarch of thought, and the 
noblest defender of the faith to the end of time. , 



I know it is more agreeable to walk upon carpets 
than to lie upon dungeon-floors ; I know it is pleas- 
ant to have all the comforts and luxuries of civili- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 191 

zation ; but he who cares only for these things is 
worth no more than a butterfly, contented and 
thoughtless upon a morning flower; and who ever 
thought of rearing a tombstone to a last summer's 
butterfly ? 



What we call wisdom is the result, not the re- 
siduum, of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best 
institutions are like young trees growing upon the 
roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away. 



Do you ever reflect that your powers of accom- 
plishment are direct mercies from heaven ? God 
does a more wonderful thing when he holds all your 
faculties in such nice adjustment and perfect play 
that you win success than he would have done if he 
had wrought the fruit of that success himself by a 
miracle. 



To the infidel, Nature's voices are but a Babel 
din. Trees rustle, and brooks babble, and winds 
blow ; but there is no meaning in their sound. To 
the Christian, all speak of God ; and if it were not 
for the dimness of the natural eye, he might see his 
hosts of angels at their ministry. The tree stretches 



192 Best Thoughts of 

out its arm, laden with fruit, like the arm of God. 
The morning sprinkles him with dew, as with holy 
water; and he is sung to sleep, at evening, with 
songs like the lullaby of earthly parents to their 
children. 



As flowers carry dew-drops, trembling on the edges 
of the petals, and ready to fall at the first waft of 
wind or brush of bird, so the heart should carry its 
beaded words of thanksgiving ; and at the first breath 
of heavenly favor, let down the shower, perfumed 
with the heart's gratitude. 



It is a solemn thing to be married ; to have to 
preach to a congregation from your own loins ; to 
have God put the hand of ordination on you in the 
birth of your children, and say to you, " Now art 
thou a priest unto those whom I have given thee." 

If ever the stream of life should flow like crystal 
water over shining stones, it should be the stream 
of daily life in the family. If God rias taught us 
all truth in teaching us to love, then he has given 
us an interpretation of our whole duty in our own 
households. We thank him that we are not )born 
as the partridge of the wood, or the ostrich of, th£ 
desert, to be scattered every whither; but that we 



Henry Ward Beecher. 193 

are grouped together and brooded by love, and 

reared day by day in that first of churches, the 
family. 



Of all earthly music, that which reaches the far- 
thest into heaven is the beating of a loving heart. 



In our land, men have classified themselves. We 
have aristocrats, but God made them ; and there 
never will be a time when mightiness of soul shall 
not overshadow littleness of soul. It was designed 
that some should be high, some intermediate, and 
some low, as trees are some forty, some a hundred, 
and some, the giant pines (how solitary their tops 
must be !) three hundred feet in height. But, how- 
ever high their tops may reach, their roots rest in 
the same soil; as men, though they can grow and 
tower aloft as much as they please, still stand on a 
common leveL 



Do the best you can where you are ; and, when 
that is accomplished, God will open a door for you, 
and a voice will call, " Come up hither into a higher 
sphere." 



1 94 Best Thoughts of 

Simply weed a man, so that he shall produce noth- 
ing evil, but never plant him, so that he shall pro- 
duce something good, and what is he worth ? If this 
be cultivation, the desert of Sahara is the most per- 
fectly cultivated spot on the globe. 



ONEjof the best prayers ever offered is that which 
Christ himself hallowed, and set apart for our ob- 
servation — "God be merciful to me, a sinner!" 
There is no title, no " forever and ever, Amen," to 
it. It is only the heart broken out of the man. 



All the sobriety which religion needs or requires 
is that which real earnestness produces. Tears and 
shadows are not needful to sobriety. Smiles and 
cheerfulness are as much its elements. When men 
say, Be sober, they usually mean, Be stupid ; but 
when the Bible says, Be sober, it means, Rouse up, 
and let fly the earnestness and vivacity of life. The 
old, scriptural sobriety was effectual doing ; the later, 
ascetic sobriety, is effectual dulness. 



One of our great troubles, as ministers, is to keep 
people from wishing to be awfully converted. There 
are those who will not come into God's kingdom 



Henry Ward Beec her. 195 

unless they can come as Dante went into paradise — 
by going through hell. They wish to walk over the 
burning marl, and to snuff the sulphureous air. 

If a man has done wrong, his own thoughts should 
turn him to reparation ; but if they do not, the first 
intimation from the injured friend should suffice. 
But if he will come to no terms until the matter has 
passed through the court, and the execution is in the 
hands of the officer, and then, at length, in the final 
extremity, yields, his yielding is the basest compliance 
of fear, and not fhe impulse of honor or conscience. 
And even more, men should be ashamed of needing 
deep convictions of sin before they repent before 
God. He must be a mean and a very wicked man 
who will not submit to God till he has been dealt 
with by such terrors. Magnanimous repentance 
never waits for the spur of remorse before it bounds 
towards the injured one, with confession and recon- 
ciliation. 



I marvel how a woman, with her need of love, 
with her sensitive, yearning, clasping nature, can look 
into the face of the Lord Jesus, and not put her arms 
about his neck, and tell him, with gushing love, that 
she commits herself, body and soul, into his sacred 
keeping ! 



1 96 Best Thoughts of 

Right over against the gloomy face of fear stands 
the Lord Jesus Christ and these words of ineffable 
cheer : " Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, 
even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given 
us everlasting consolation and good hope through 
grace, comfort your hearts." I cannot read such a 
passage as this without feeling that it is like a mother's 
putting her hand on her child's head, and soothing it, 
and stroking down its curls, and fondling it, or putting 
her arms about it and caressing it. As a mother not 
simply speaks, but in a thousand winning ways carries 
out the words in practice, so, when I read this pas- 
sage, it is as though God's Spirit caressed me and 
was bringing me comfort. 



Asceticism is not dead yet. A man may be poor 
in spirit without being poor in his garments. Because 
a man is a Christian he is not called to forswear the 
treasures of refinement. Consecrated using, and not 
despising and throwing away, is God's law for riches 
and beauty, and all earthly good. All secular good 
belongs to the Christian more than to any other man. 
In God's wish, he is not only the heir of God here- 
after, but it is declared that he shall now inherit the 
earth. A Christian who every day carries home his 



Henry Ward Beecher. 197 

gifts to Christ may be heaped with treasure, and with 
all things that are beautiful in the world. The world 
only waits till Christians can bear it without self-in- 
dulgence, before it pours all its bright possessions 
into their lap. It is enough that Christ was born in 
a manger ; his children are not always to tabernacle 
there. Christ is not to be the pauper of the universe 
forever. He is to be the King of glory. 



There are some people who forever add a "But 
then" to every positive having, and so always make a 
drain or sluiceway by which the heavenly stream of 
God's favors escapes from them. 



The church has been so fearful of amusements that 
the devil has had the care of them. The chaplet of 
flowers has been snatched from the brow of Christ, 
and given to Mammon. 



Many people think that doctrine should be the 
staple of preaching, — that on a rainy day, or when the 
minister is not quite well, he can preach morality^— 



1 98 Best Thoughts of 

but that when he is strong and vigorous, and knows 
what he is about, he should preach doctrine. This 
doctrinal preaching may be the food for one tenth of 
the congregation ; but the nine tenths will be driven 
by it, through disgust, into moralities. It creates two 
distinct parties — the spiritualists, who are always 
looking Godward, and crying, " Thither, thither!" 
and the moralists, who look man ward, and cry, 
" Hither, hither!" The one party lives in the then, 
the other party in the now. Both are right, — minister 
and people, — and both are wrong. Doctrines and 
moralities must be united. 

Many ministers forge doctrines as they would forge 
ploughs. One Sunday it is election ; and they heat 
it red hot, and beat and hammer it upon the anvil, 
and then put it away, cold iron, upon the shelf. The 
next Sunday it is decrees ; and they beat and hammer 
that, and lay it also aside. The next Sunday it is the 
perseverance of the saints ; and the next, the origin 
of evil, or some equally incomprehensible thing, for 
the farther a subject is from the range of human 
faculties the better it seems to be to make a doctrine 
of ; and so they go on through the year, with oc- 
casional exceptions, and the next year they take them 
down and cast them over again. They do not use 
them. They only fashion them. They rub them up, 
they polish them, and then lay them again on the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 1 99 

shelf — disputing meanwhile which pattern is best. 
There are various schools ; and each school has its 
own pattern, and berates the others, without ever 
doing as inventors do at agricultural fairs — taking 
their ploughs out into the field with them, to see 
which can do the best work. 



Now, I believe in doctrines, with my explanations, 
as much as they ; but I must use them. My duty is 
to forge a plough, and then to give it a handle, and 
then to fasten a team to it strong as eternity, and to 
put it into the soil, and to rip through the sod down 
to the subsoil, and to roust out all the vermin and 
the nibbing mice, and turn up the yellow dirt to the 
sun. 

No doctrine is good for anything that does not 
leave behind it an ethical furrow ready for the plant- 
ing of seeds which shall spring up and bear abundant 
harvests. 



There are many of us whose children are in heaven, 
who have been borne from us through quick life to lie 
in angels' bosoms ; and, though they were not wrested 
from us without pangs, and though the places which 
they filled in our hearts are as wells of tears, yet wc 
would not have them back, and we are glad to-day 



200 Best Thoughts of 

for our sakes and for their own. And some we are 
piloting, but must soon leave them alone upon the 
tossing sea. God grant that then, without shipwreck, 
they may safely reach the haven where we have gone. 



When a church is faithless to its duties, the real 
church is outside its walls, in the community. 



In plan, include the whole ; in execution, take life 
day by day. Men do not know how to reconcile the 
oppugnant directions that we should live for the 
future, and yet should find our life in fidelities to the 
present ; but the last is only the method of the first. 
True aiming, in life, is like true aiming in marksman- 
ship. We always look at the fore-sight of a rifle 
through the hind-sight. 



There are many Christians who like, about once 
in twelve months, to have a good revival in their 
hearts. They think that, like the year, they can make 
up for freezing and snowing all winter by a period of 
intense heat in the summer. The remedy for such is 
not to chill the revivals, but to shorten the intervals 
between them, and to endeavor to make their life 
equatorial and tropical all the year round, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 201 

No one cries when children, long absent from their 
parents, go home. Vacation morning is a jubilee. 
But death is the Christian's vacation morning. School 
is out. It is time to go home. It is surprising that 
one should wish life here, who may have life in heaven. 
And when friends have gone out from us joyously, I 
think we should go with them to the grave, not singing 
mournful psalms, but scattering flowers. Christians 
are wont to walk in black, and sprinkle the ground 
with tears, at the very time when they should walk in 
white, and illumine the way by smiles and radiant 
hope. The disciples found angels at the grave of 
Him they loved ; and we should always find them 
too, but that our eyes are too full of tears for seeing. 



The stars do not come to tell us that it is night, 
but to lay beams of light through it, and give the eye 
a path to walk in. It needed the mission of Christ 
10 lift the darkness which brooded over the world, 
not to proclaim it ; and therefore it was said, " To 
them which sat in the region and shadow of death 
light is sprung up." When men grope through the New 
Testament, and come forth with denials of man's 
wickedness, from the supposed lack of peremptory 
assertions, my reply to them would be, " Go, search 
all medical books ; find me an argument to prove that 



202 Best Thoughts of 

there are fevers, or dropsies, or plagues. Search all 
military works, and find me the passages which la- 
boriously seek to prove that men have been slain. 
Search through all optical works, and bring me the 
passage which declares that there is an eye, and that 
there is such an act as seeing." If there were as little 
common sense among men in every-day life as there 
is in their treatment of the Bible, the whole earth 
must needs become a lunatic asylum to hold all who 
should be sent there. 



Never forget what a man has said to you when he 
was angry. If he has charged you with anything, 
you had better look it up. Anger is a bow that will 
shoot sometimes where another feeling will not. 



There is many a Christian who has higher views 
of God in his closet, or on the sea, or when travelling 
through lonely woods, than he ever has in the sanctu- 
ary — outstartings, so to speak, of God before him, 
which reveal Him more plainly than anything he 
ever found when he was seeking for Him. 



Suffering is a part of the divine idea. All our 
faculties stand in a double constitution, and are just 



Henry Ward Beec her. 203 

as really susceptible of pain as of pleasure. We were 
created so that every nerve was provided with this 
twofold nature, and both of them are divine. The 
world is filled full of dangerous things, — things 
which can bruise, and cut, and poison, — and no angel 
stands near them to say, " Come not here." There 
is not a step we can take but death is there. Pain is 
continually on the larboard or starboard side, and life 
consists in steering between dangers on the one hand 
or the other. Where there is so much sorrow, there 
is only one way. It is to think that suffering is a 
part of happiness. One who does this takes all trials, 
and heaps them up, and says, "They are no longer to 
me what they were before. They are not opaque ; 
they are luminous." 



A man in a state of hot-brain nervousness is burn- 
ing up. He is like a candle in a hot candle-stick, 
which burns off at one end and melts down at the 
other. 



It is a sad thing to look at some of the receiving 
hulks at the navy-yard — to think that that was the 
ship which once went so fearlessly across the ocean ! 
It has come back to be anchored in some quiet bay, 
and so roll this way and that with the tide. Yet this 



204 Best Thoughts of 

is what many men set before them as the end of life 
— that they may reach some haven, where they will 
be able to cast out an anchor at the bow and an 
anchor at the stern, and never move again ; but rock 
lazily, without a sail, without a voyage, waiting sim- 
ply for decay to take apart their timbers. 



I have seen men who, I thought, ought to have 
a whole conversion for each one of their faculties. 
Their natures were so unmitigatedly wicked that it 
cost more for them to be decent than it would for 
other men to be saints. 



Public sentiment is like a battery, which protects 
the city that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction 
all the plain that is before it. It powerfully restrains 
men from doing wrong; but when they have done 
wrong, it sets itself as powerfully against them. The 
height of Dover Cliffs would prevent a man from 
jumping into the sea ; but once amid the thunder of 
the waves, and what chance would there be for him 
to climb the steep ? 



Many people regard the Bible as an old ruin. 
They think there may be some chambers in it which 



Henry Ward Beecher. 205 

might be made habitable, if it were worth the while; 
but they take it as a young heir takes his estate, who 
says, " I shall build me a modern house to live in, but 
I'll keep the old castle as a ruin;" and so they have 
some scientific or literary house to live in, and look 
upon the Bible only as a romantic relic of the past. 



A man must not only desire to be right— he must 
be right. You may say, " I wish to send this ball so 
as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring 
upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Provi- 
dence will direct the ball." Providence won't. You 
must do it ; and if you do not, you are a dead man. 



Men are greatly relieved when they have at length 
rid themselves of belief in some unwelcome doctrine 
— as if facts could be destroyed as easily as opinions. 

God sees that you are naked and poor, and comes 
to you with a royal wardrobe and all supplies. Sup- 
pose you succeed in proving that there is no food or 
raiment ; you are still poor and naked. What would 
you think, if there were to be an insurrection in a 
hospital, and sick man should conspire with sick man, 
and on a certain day they should rise up and reject 
the doctors and nurses ! There they would be — 



$06 J3est Thoughts of 

sickness and disease within, and all the help without ! 
Yet what is a hospital compared to this fever-ridden 
world, which goes swinging in pain and anguish 
through the centuries, where men say, " We have got 
rid of the atonement, and we are rid of the Bible"? 
Yes, and you have rid yourselves of salvation. 



As, though the sky is not steadfastly clear, but 
often is covered with clouds, yet through the folds 
there shine at intervals the everlasting stars, so 
through the darkness of our hearts there steals at 
times the celestial glory, and we rejoice that there is 
a heaven above the world. 



You know how the heart is subject to freshets ; 
you know how the mother, who, always loving her 
child, yet, seeing in it some new wile of affection, will 
catch it up and cover it with kisses, and break forth 
in a rapture of loving. Such a kind of heart-glow 
fell from the Saviour upon that young man who said 
to him, "Good Master, what good thing shall I do 
that I may inherit eternal life?" It is said, "Then 
Jesus, beholding him, loved him." 



Some men spend their lives in picking off dead 



Henry Word Beecher. 16J 

leaves from the tree of their being. They think they 
are growing better because they now and then take 
out their will, like a pruning-knife, to cut off this and 
that bough. They imagine they are self-denying be- 
cause they dust themselves over with unpleasant sul- 
phur; but, all the while, they never go to the root, 
where the worm of selfishness is working. 



There are many trials in life which do not seem to 
come from unwisdom or folly. They are silver arrows 
shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in 
the quivering heart. They are to be borne. They 
were not meant, like snow on water, to melt as soon 
as they strike. But the moment an ill can be patiently 
borne, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its 
pain. 



The thought of the future punishment for the 
wicked, which the Bible reveals, is enough to make 
an earthquake of terror in every man's soul. I do not 
accept the doctrine of eternal punishment because I 
delight in it. I would cast in doubts, if I could, till 
I had filled hell up to the brim. I would destroy all 
faith in it; but that would do me no good; I could 
not destroy the thing. Nor does it help me to take 



2o8 Best Thoughts of 

the word "everlasting," and put it into a rack like an 
inquisitor, until I make it shriek out some other mean- 
ing ; I cannot alter the stern fact. 

The exposition of future punishment in God's word 
is not to be regarded as a threat, but as a merciful 
declaration. If, in the ocean of life, over which we 
are bound to eternity, there are these rocks and shoals, 
it is no cruelty to chart them down ; it is an eminent 
and prominent mercy. 



There are no buds which can open without the sun, 
but there is a great difference in the time it takes them 
to unfold. Some have their outer petals so closely 
wrapped and glued together that there must be many 
days of warm shining before they will begin to ex- 
pand ; and others there are which make haste to get 
out of the ground, and almost as soon as they are 
buds they are blossoms. So is it with human hearts. 
Some are so cold and impervious that it seems as 
though God's Spirit never could reach them ; and 
others there are which open to its first influences. 



Some people have no perspective in their conscience. 
Their moral convictions are the same on all subjects. 
They are like a reader who speaks every word with 
equal emphasis. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 209 

Every thought and feeling is a painting stroke, in 
the darkness, of our likeness that is to be ; and our 
whole life is but a chamber, which we are frescoing 
with colors that do not appear while being laid on wet, 
but which will shine forth afterwards when finished 
and dry. 



Ir there are any here this morning who are bewil- 
dered, and are wandering up and down in the forest of 
their own thoughts, sitting down to rest, and then 
rising again to renew their fruitless search for the path 
that leads out to light and joy, may the Shepherd of 
the lost go after them, and bring them back, if need 
be, in his own bosom. And if there are any who are 
in the garden, and, knowing not the Lord, are calling, 
"Tell me where they have laid him," may he speak to 
them by their names, that they may cry, " My Lord 
and my God ! " 



There is no day born but comes like a stroke of 
music into the world, and sings itself all the way 
through. There is no event that is discordant. All 
times and passages are full of melody, if we would 
but hear it. And as, in tumultuous floods and rush- 
ing falls of water, every drop is as obedient to the 
laws of nature as if it lay in the bosom of the tranquil 



2io Best Thoughts of 

lake, so all things in earth and in hell, in their wildest 
excesses as well as in their calmest flows, are obedient 
to God ; and his Providence is in them stately and 
serene, going on to its own ends and manifestations. 



It is winter now. The earth is frost-bound, and 
incrusted with ice and snow ; but soon the sun will 
come wheeling from the tropics, and the voice of 
Spring will call, and the violets and daisies shall hear 
it, as well as the pines in Oregon, and everywhere 
there shall be life, and growth, and beauty. So it is 
with man. His winter has been long and dark; but 
the sun of God's love shall shine, and the crusts of 
tyranny and the frosts of oppression shall melt away 
beneath its rays, and the humblest as well as the loft- 
iest creature shall yet stand in the light and liberty of 
the sons of God. 



Like gardens with high stone walls, very rich and 
pleasant to those who get in, but very unlovely and 
forbidding to those who are without, so are men of 
taste and cultivation, who spend their whole lives to 
themselves with knowledges and refinements most 
needful to common men, and employ all their pride 
to build themselves around inaccessible. 



Henry Ward Beecher. ± i 1 

As, when our infant children are garnered in our 
bosoms, we do not bless them according to their 
capacity of asking, but according to the wealth of 
affection that is in our hearts for them, so does God, 
lifting us up and looking in our faces, bless us, not so 
much by what we need to receive, as by what he 
hath to give. Clouds never send down to ask the 
grass and plants below how much they need ; they 
rain for the relief of their own full bosoms. 



Heaven will be inherited by every man who has 
heaven in his soul. "The kingdom of God is within 
you." 



There are hundreds of churches which are nothing 
but mutual insurance companies, seeking to take care 
of themselves and of each other, and to see that relig- 
ion is protected. Religion protected ! It was given 
us for our protection, and we are not to carry it un- 
used and shielded from blows, but to put it on like 
armor, and to go down with it into the battle. 
When Paul said, " Quit ye like men," he was not 
thinking of those Christians who are rocked in the 
cradle of a conservative church, by the slippered foot 
of a soft-speaking minister, to all delicate ditties ; but 



2 1 2 Best Thoughts of 

of a stalwart soldier, with his face as bronzed as his 
helmet, and ready for the fray. 

It is not a man's part merely to keep his armor 
bright; to hang around the edge of the fight, and, 
whenever he sees it bulging out towards him, to re- 
treat to a hill, and, if any dust has fallen upon his 
armor, to set to work at once to brush it off. It is a 
man's business to go down to the battle, and to use 
his sword when he gets there. Man was not meant 
to be an armor-keeper ; but there are men who go all 
their lives scrubbing up their armor — keeping their 
hope bright and their faith bright, but never using 
them. Miserable, scouring Christians ! 



What if the leaves were to fall a-weeping, and say, 
" It will be so painful for us to be pulled from our 
stalks, when autumn comes"? Foolish fear! Sum- 
mer goes, and autumn succeeds. The glory of death 
is upon the leaves ; and the gentlest breeze that blows 
takes them softly and silently from the bough, and 
they float slowly down, like fiery sparks, upon the 
moss. 

It is hard to die when the time is not ripe. When 
it is, it will be easy. We need not die whi'le we are 
living. 



Henry Ward Bee cher. 213 

Our business, as ministers, is not to make men a 
something else than men, called Christians; it is to 
take Christianity as a formative influence, by which 
to make men. They are re-created, it is true ; but it 
is not out of manhood, but into manhood. Grace is 
meant to carry men back to nature, whose true laws 
and intents are only the moulds of God's thoughts. 
The idea of the Bible is not to make neat, snug, nice, 
dapper little Christians, that go tripping along the 
ways of life. There is no warrant in the Bible for 
anything which is not manly, and robust, and large. 
Cautiousness and timidity, a narrow path and a timid 
policy, are not Christian traits. 



* As bells answer bells, and strike with sweet colli- 
sion in the air, so may heart answer heartland joy 
answer joy, upon this wedding-day, when those w r ho 
are affianced to God are openly united to him in holy 
communion. 



I have seen men whose reverence for religion was 
so morbid that they could hardly lift up their eyes to 
heaven, but who made it up by the way they looked 
down on their fellow-men — men who yielded to no 

* At communion, 



2 1 4 Best Thoughts of 

master here, who were touched by no name of friend 
or brother ; but the moment the name of God was 
pronounced, they collapsed. 



Why should you carry troubles and sorrows un- 
healed ? There is no bodily wound for which some 
herb doth not grow, and heavenly plants are more 
medicinal. Bind up your hearts in them, and they 
shall give you not only healing, but leave with you 
the perfume of the blessed gardens where they grew. 
Thus it may be that sorrows shall turn to riches ; for 
heart troubles, in God's husbandry, are not wounds, 
but the putting in of the spade before the planting of 
seeds. 



Men come to think that the guilt of sins committed 
in concert is distributed ; and that if there be a 
thousand men banded and handed together in wicked- 
ness, each shall have but the one-thousandth part of 
guilt. If a firm succeeds, the gain is distributed to 
each partner. But if it fails, each one may be held 
for the whole loss. Whoever commits a sin will bear 
the sin, whether alone or with a thousand. Whoever 
commits or connives at a public sin will bear the 
blame, as if he alone did it. Public guilt always has 



Henry Ward Beecher. 2 1 5 

private indorsement, and each man is liable for the 
whole note. 



No matter how good the walls and the materials 
are, if the foundations are not strong, the building 
will not stand. By and by, in some upper room, a 
crack will appear, and men will say, "There is the 
crack, but the cause is in the foundation." So, if in 
youth you lay the foundations of your character 
wrongly, the penalty will be sure to follow. The 
crack may be far down in old age, but somewhere it 
will certainly appear. 



That which is called "public sentiment " is often 
nothing but a rod held over the head of approba- 
tiveness. 



It is right to have an expansive benevolence, to 
take into our regard the world and the race ; but 
where foreign charity is but a defence against home 
kindness, it is a base, sentimental sham. Thousands 
will cry over compressed feet in China who are quite 
unaffected by souls compressed in America. That 
religion should compel mothers, in India, to cast their 
babes to the Ganges shocks every sensibility of some 



2 1 6 Best Thoughts of 

men's souls, who can see no occasion for grief that 
commerce snatches from the dusky mother in Amer- 
ica her babes, and casts them forth to slavery — a worse 
monster than was ever bred in the slime of the Ganges 
or the mud of the Nile. 

A Christian nation, jealous of its laws, but careless 
of its people, — conservative of its institutions, but 
contemptuous of the weak and poor whom those in- 
stitutions oppress, — are baptized infidels. Christ 
never died for laws nor for governments, but for 
men; and they who crush men to build up nations 
may expect God to meet them with the blast of his 
lightning and the terror of his thunder. The masses 
against the classes, the world over, — I am willing to 
go to judgment upon that. 



In the Bible, the word doctrine means simply teach- 
ing, instruction. It was a moral direction, a simple 
maxim, or a familiar practical truth. It certainly was 
not that thing which theologians have made doctrine 
to be — a mere philosophical abstraction, The doc- 
trines which the schools teach are no more like those 
of the Bible than the carved beams of Solomon's 
temple were like God's cedar-trees on Mount 
Lebanon. But men cut and hew till they have 
shaped their own fancies out of God's timber, and 



Henry Ward Beecher. 2 1 7 

then they get upon them like judgment-day thrones, 
and call all the world to answer at their feet for 
heresies against their idols. There are few heresies 
in the world more real than the very idea of an ab- 
stract doctrine presented as God's truth. That way 
of thinking which men call metaphysics seems not to 
be employed above. It is only a method of weakness 
down below. It is a preparation dissected and 
arranged for our microscope, who have not eyes 
strong enough to see things just as God made them 
and just as he keeps them. 



If a fireplace have a good chimney, the smoke will 
escape through the flue, and the room will have the 
benefit of the warmth and the ruddy light. So there 
are people who will be kind and good-natured to all 
about them if you give them some single person on 
whom they may vent their impatience and peevish- 
ness. Otherwise they will fill the whole room with 
smoke. Social circles need chimneys as much as do 
houses. 



There is nothing in this world so fiendish as the 
conduct of a mean man when he has the power to re- 
venge himself upon a noble one in adversity. It 



2 1 8 Best Thoughts of 

takes a man to make a devil ; and the fittest man for 
such a purpose is a snarling, waspish, red-hot, fiery 
creditor. 



A law is valuable, not because it is law, but be- 
cause there is right in it; and because of this Tight- 
ness it is like a vessel carrying perfume — like the 
alabaster enclosure of a lamp. A principle is better 
than a rule ; yet we are not to despise rules, for they 
are leading strings intended to bring us along the 
path of life to principles. A rule is like a mould. 
You pour in the wax ; and when it is pressed, it 
comes out, and the mould is left behind. The end of 
a rule is to bring the man out from the rule. Rules 
are like sepals around a rose-bud— good to keep the 
bud through its first stages ; but when it opens, and 
comes to the perfect flower, then they fall off, and are 
useless. The highest type of character is that which 
is made up of feelings so luminous that the man takes 
a more elevated path than he could ever do if he 
were bound down to rules and precedents. 



A man's strength, in this life, is often greater from 
some single word, remembered and cherished, than 
in arms or armor. Looking over the dead on a field 
of battle ; it was easy to see why that young man, and 



Henry Ward Beecher. 219 

he a recruit, fought so valiantly. Hidden under his 
vest was a sweet face, done up in gold ; and so, 
through love's heroism, he fought with double 
strokes, and danger mounting higher, till he found 
honor in death. So, if you carry the talisman of 
Christ in your heart, it will give you strength and 
courage in every conflict, and, at death, open to you 
the gates of glory. 



Loving is like music. Some instruments can go 
up two octaves, some four, and some all the way 
from black thunder to sharp lightning. As some 
of them are susceptible only of melody, so some 
hearts can sing but one song of love, while others 
will run in a full choral harmony. 



* In commercial crises, manhood is at a greater 
discount than funds are. Suppose a man had said 
to me, last spring, " If there comes' a pinch in your 
affairs, draw on me for ten thousand dollars," — the 
man said so last spring, but I should not dare to 
draw on him this fall. I should say, " Times have 
changed ; he would not abide by it." But God's 
promises are " from everlasting to everlasting," and 

* JFrorn a sermon on the financial crisis, October, 1857, 



220 Best Thoughts of 

he always stands up to them. There never was a 
run on heaven which was not promptly met. No 
creature in all the world, or in lying, audacious hell, 
shall ever say that he drew a draft upon heaven, and 
that God dishonored it. 



How wonderful that Christ should love us ! We 
know how to love our children, because they are 
better than we ; we know how to love our friends, 
because they are no worse than we ; but how Christ 
can stoop from out the circle of blessed spirits to love 
us, who are begrimed with sin, and bestormed with 
temptation, and wrestling with the lowest parts of 
humanity, — that is past our finding out. He has 
loved us from the foundation of the world ; and be- 
cause heaven was too far away for us to see, he came 
down to earth to do the things which he has always 
been doing profusely above. Christ's life on earth 
was not an official mission ; it was a development of 
his everlasting state ; a dip to bring within our 
horizon those characteristics and attributes which 
otherwise we could not comprehend ; — God's pil- 
grimage on earth as a shepherd, in search of his wolf- 
imperilled fold. And when I look into his life, I 
say to myself, " As tender as this, and yet on earth ? 
What is he now, then ? If he was such when im- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 221 

prisoned in the flesh, what is he now in the fulJ 
liberty and largeness of his heavenly state?" 



How hateful is that religion which says, " Business 
is business, and politics are politics, and religion is 
religion " ! Religion is using everything for God ; 
but many men dedicate business to the devil, and 
politics to the devil, and shove religion into the 
cracks and crevices of time, and make it the hypo- 
critical outcrawling of their leisure and laziness. 



As sometimes, when we go to our work in sum- 
mer, we are annoyed by swarms of insects that fill 
the air with murmurous buzz, and trouble the eye 
and the ear, and offend every sense, so there are 
some passages in the Bible so infested by commenta- 
tors, by controversialists, and theologians, and curious 
Christians, that one cannot approach them except 
through a swarm of buzzing associations which dis- 
tract the reason, and pervert the judgment, and take 
away all the heart-enjoyment which they were meant 
to give. The only way to get at the truth is to strip 
them of all foregone knowledges. Among these pas- 
sages is the eighth chapter of Romans, which one 
would think was a grindstone on which all men 



22 2 Best Thoughts of 

sharpened their wits, and brought their theories to an 
edge and a point. Do not read this chapter with 
commentaries ; if you do, they will raise such a dust 
that you cannot see a foot before you. It is going 
over Jordan into the promised land to read this 
chapter as it was intended to be read. I could walk 
over it dry-shod, as the Israelites did over the Red 
Sea. It is only those who are wise in their head, and 
poverty-stricken in their heart, upon whom the waves 
of difficulty return on either side. It was meant to 
open up the regality of God's nature, and to show 
his bounteous love and tenderness towards those 
" who are the called according to his purpose " — that 
is, who love him. 



The boy holds his ball of twine in his hand, and 
thinks it is not much, he can clasp it so easily ; but 
when he begins to unroll it, and his wind-borne kite 
mounts higher and higher, till, at length, that which, 
on the ground, was taller than he, is now no bigger 
than his hand, he is astonished to see how long it is. 
So there are little texts which look small in your 
palm, but when caught up upon some experience 
they unfold themselves, and stretch out until there is 
no measuring their length. 



Henry Ward Bee chef. 223 

I have always been much affected by Christ's reply 
to the Syro-Phcenician woman when she begged him 
to cast the devil out of her daughter. If I saw the 
poorest child in the street falling down in convulsions, 
and agonized and distorted with pain, and it were in 
my power to restore her, how gladly would I go to 
her, and raise her up, and bring her back to health 
and joy ! Now, how little is my willingness, com- 
pared to Christ's ! for what in me is one little pulsa- 
tion, in him is the tide of the universe. His heart 
went out towards the poor suppliant with infinite 
yearning and tenderness. He longed, and meant, to 
grant her request, and yet he stops to parley with her: 
" It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to 
cast it unto the dogs." I hardly know how to express 
this delaying of mercy in God — this sublime playful- 
ness, is it ? — this coyness, is not that the word ? or is 
it a certain holding back, as one draws the bow back 
when he means to send the shaft yet farther? 

The apostle speaks of things which are not, as 
^bringing to naught things that are; and so many of 
Christ's silences impress me full as much as his say- 
ings; his rests and not-doings seem even more signifi- 
cant, at times, than that which was overt. That 
which he said was what could be expressed and re- 
ceived by the mind; but when, pausing, he said, " I 
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot 



224 Best Thoughts of 

bear them now," my imagination is inflamed as with 
the idea of an upper sphere too vast for words or 
interpretation. 



Many Christians are like chestnuts^ — very pleasant 
nuts, but enclosed in very prickly burs, which need 
various dealings of Nature, and her grip of frost, 
before the kernel is disclosed. 



In moist and liberal summers the wheat is often cov- 
ered with fungi and parasitic plants; and it has to be 
put through smutting-machines, that it may be cleansed 
and made ready for grinding into flour. So men, in 
prosperity, often have fungi and parasitic plants grow- 
ing on almost every faculty; and then, to purify them, 
God puts them through trials which are like smutting- 
machines to the wheat. The best thing which can 
happen to such men is a trouble that will bolt them. 



As a general rule, self-contemplation is a power 
towards mischief. The only way to grow is to look 
out of one's self. There is too much introversion 
among Christians. A shipmaster might as well look 
down into the hold of his ship for the north star, as a 
Christian look down into his own heart for the sun of 
righteousness. Out and beyond is the shining. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 225 

As I grow, older and come nearer to death, I look 
upon it more and more with complacent joy, and out 
of every longing I hear God say, " O thirsting, hun- 
gering one, come to me." What the other life will 
bring I know not, only that I shall awake in God's 
likeness, and see him as he is. If a child had been 
born and spent all his life in the Mammoth Cave, how 
impossible would it be for him to comprehend the 
upper world ! His parents might tell him of its life, 
and light, and beauty, and its sounds of joy; they 
might heap up the sand into mounds, and try to show 
him by pointing to stalactites how grass, and flowers, 
and trees grow out of the ground, till at length, with 
laborious thinking, the child would fancy he had 
gained a true idea of the unknown land. And yet, 
though he longed to behold it, when the day came 
that he was to go forth, it would be with regret for 
the familiar crystals, and the rock-hewn rooms, and 
the quiet that reigned therein. But when he came 
up, some May morning, with ten thousand birds sing- 
ing in the trees, and the heavens bright, and blue, and 
full of sunlight, and the wind blowing softly through 
the young leaves, all a-glitter with dew, and the land- 
scape stretching away green and beautiful to the 
horizon, with what rapture would he gaze about him, 
and see how poor were all the fancyings and the 
interpretations which were made within the cave, of 



226 Best Thoughts of 

the things which grew and lived without ; and how 
would he wonder that he could have regretted to leave 
the silence and the dreary darkness of his old abode ! 
So, when we emerge from this cave of earth into that 
land where spring growths are, and where is summer, 
and not that miserable travesty which we call summer 
here, how shall we wonder that we could have clung 
so fondly to this dark and barren life ! 

Beat on, then, O heart, and yearn for dying. I 
have drunk at many a fountain, but thirst came again; 
I have fed at many a bounteous table, but hunger 
returned ; I have seen many bright and lovely things, 
but, while I gazed, their lustre faded. There is 
nothing here that can give me rest; but when I 
behold thee, O God, I shall be satisfied ! 



It is a joy to me to know that the Christians 
within the communion of this church are not all the 
Christians to be found in the congregation. We are 
richer than we appear to be. Here are growing pear- 
trees, apple-trees, cherry-trees, and shrubs, and blos- 
soming vines, and flowers of every hue and odor; 
but I am glad that some seeds have been blown over 
the wall, and that fruit-trees and flowers most pleas- 
ant to the eye are springing up there also. And 
though I wish they were within the enclosure, where 



Henry Ward Beecher. 227 

the boar out of the wood could not waste them, and 
the wild beast of the field devour them, yet I love 
them, and am glad to see them growing there. To 
all such I say, God nourish and protect you, and 
bring you, with us, to the garden above. 



A man may look over an artist at his work, and 
see that he makes bad strokes, but yet shall see that 
he is to be a good artist. The sense of his purpose is 
not marred by his imperfect execution. So a Chris- 
tian may have an irritable temper, or be a proud man, 
and may yet live so that the impression is produced 
that he is trying to regulate his interior nature by the 
law of Christ. He is a Christian who is manfully 
struggling to live a Christian's life. 



Reason can tell how love affects us, but cannot 
tell what love is. 



Did you ever sit in a half-cleared forest, in a sum- 
mer's day, and, looking up, see the light come fleck- 
ering down in uncounted shades ofgolden brown and 
greenish gold, and these all the while changing and 
running into each other with the rustling leaves and 



228 Best Thoughts of 

the cloud-crossed sun ? How useless to attempt t6 
chronicle this play and interplay of light and dark ! 
yet this would be simple and easy, compared with the 
effort to note the number and variety of our thoughts 
and feelings for a single hour. If the flow of a day's 
mind and heart experiences were written, it would be 
a volume, and one's life a Bodleian library ; but the 
"book of remembrance" is yonder, and the life is 
daguerreotyped on the sensitive pages of the future. 



As ships meet at sea, a moment together, when 
words of greeting must be spoken, and then away 
upon the deep, so men meet in this world ; and I 
think we should cross no man's path without hailing 
him, and, if he needs, giving him supplies. 



Three natural philosophers go out into the forest 
and find a nightingale's nest, and forthwith they begin 
to discuss the habits of the bird, its size, its color, and 
the number of eggs it lays ; and one pulls out of his 
pocket a treatise of Buffon, and another of Cuvier, 
and another of Audubon, and they read and dispute 
till at length the quarrel runs so high over the empty 
nest that they tear each other's leaves, and get red in 
the face, and the woods ring with their conflict ; when, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 229 

lo ! out of the green shade of a neighboring thicket 
the bird itself, rested, and disturbed by these side 
noises, begins to sing. At first its song is soft and 
low, and then it rises and swells, and waves of melody 
float up over the trees, and fill the air with tremulous 
music, and all the forest doth hush ; and the en- 
tranced philosophers, subdued and ashamed of their 
quarrel, shut their books and walk home without a 
word. 

So men who around the empty sepulchre of Christ 
have wrangled about the forms of religion, about 
creeds, and doctrines, and ordinances, when Christ 
himself, disturbed by their discords, sings to them, 
out of heaven, of love, and peace, and joy in the 
Holy Ghost, are ashamed of their conflicts, and go 
quietly and meekly to their duties. 



There are some men who are so outrageously 
cultivated that they are miserable the moment they 
are away from all which is exquisite. It is a pity 
that such men were born into a rough world like 
this, where God forgot to finish up rocks, and to 
make tree-trunks smooth, and to slope the mountains 
down gently to the plains. That is true cultivation 
which gives us sympathy with every form of human 
life, and enables us to work most successfully for its 



230 Best Thoughts of 

advancement. Refinement that carries us away from 
our fellow-men is not God's refinement. 



If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear 
trouble, he will grow up a girl ; and a boy that is a 
girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal 
qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's 
noblest work ; a woman made out of a man is his 
meanest. A child rightly brought up will be like a 
willow branch, which, broken off and touching the 
ground, at once takes root. Bring up your children 
so that they will root easily in their own soil and not 
forever be grafted into your old trunk and boughs. 



As, in freshets on western rivers, sticks of timber 
and broken branches are borne down the flood and 
lodged in the boughs of trees, where they remain for 
years, lifted far up above the ground, dry and help- 
less, so, in revival freshets, men are sometimes caught 
in the boughs of this or that church, and stay merely 
because they are lodged there ; and men passing by 
afterwards, and seeing dry logs strangely perched in 
so uncouth a way, wonder what force of water ever 
bore such worthless stuff so high. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 231 

A Christian merchant should so act that his cus- 
tomers shall see and know that he is a Christian ; not 
merely that he conducts his business on great maxims 
of honesty, but that business itself is subordinate and 
instrumental to the great purposes of life. Is it so 
with you ? How far does the difference between you 
and the worldly man lie in the fact that on the 
seventh day you have a little tabernacle of religious 
experience into which you run ? Go through the 
streets and stores of New York ; you can pick out 
the men that are wealthy ; can you pick out the men 
that are Christians ? What wonder that truth makes 
such slow advances in the world, with one Christian 
to tell what is true for two hours on Sunday, and 
hundreds to deny it all the week by their lives ! 



Many men are lamenting their misfortunes, and 
wishing that their place was changed that they might 
the more easily live Christianly. If a man cannot be 
a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a 
Christian anywhere. 



If I could not send a man among the mountains, 
or through the valleys, or by the side of streams, I 
would shut him up in the resounding recesses of the 



232 Best Thoughts of , 

Old Testament. There is more loving description of 
nature in the Psalms alone than in all Greek and 
Roman literature. Yet the Bible has been used so 
unfairly, and a truckling priesthood have drawn from 
it such base arguments, that men of free and generous 
natures have been repelled by it, and have gone away 
with the wings of literature and the feet of science to 
find God in the great realm of nature. In those 
sciences which might be called the light infantry of 
progress, the Zouaves of thought, that are skirmishing 
in the valleys, and hanging along the hills, and sending 
vanguards against the enemy, there is much infidelity. 
I, too, will go out and read God in the strata ; I, 
too, through the stars will hear the chiming of the 
spheres ; I will be behind none in enjoying the sweet 
perfume of flowers ; but when I do all this, I will re- 
member that the Bible is the beacon-fire at which I 
have lighted the torch that has guided me to this 
knowledge and these delights. 



A conservative young man has wound up his life 
before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be 
conservative, but when a nation's young men are so, 
its funeral-bell is already rung. 



Where is there a reason strong enough to fly up 



Henry Ward Beecher. 233 

and pluck the secret out of the bosom of God which 
it has not pleased his tongue to make known ? I ac 
cept the fact, the august, solemn fact, that it was 
necessary for Christ to suffer ; the theological ex- 
planations I do not believe a word in. 

Those who say that Christ's sufferings were not 
vicarious will have to fight, not only with the Bible, 
but with all the weight of human life. Suffering, in 
human life, is very widely vicarious. Every man 
feels this in himself, one part of his being paying 
another's penalty. If he loves overmuch, it is not 
love that suffers, but conscientiousness. If his pas- 
sions are unduly excited, it is his moral nature that 
feels the transgression. If the brain be overwrought, 
the body feels it. The first lesson of life is one of 
vicarious suffering. As we go to the ship to see 
friends depart, and leave them with cheers, and bene- 
dictions, and wafted kisses, so when a young spirit is 
about to be launched into this earthly life, one would 
think that troops of angels would attend it, and with 
hope and gladness see it on its way. But no. Silently 
it passes the bounds of the unseen land, and the gate 
which opens to admit it to this is a gate of tears and 
moans. Through the sorrow of another is it ushered 
into existence. Love cannot clasp all it yearns for, 
in its bosom, without first suffering for it. The child 
lives upon its parents' life. The child which has no 



234 Best Thoughts of 

one to suffer for it is a miserable wretch. And, from 
this point onward, in every relation of life, one man 
suffers for another's benefit. It is the law of social 
life, and I do not see why we should think it strange 
that Christ obeyed the same law, only in a grander 
way. 



Consecration is not wrapping one's self in a holy 
web in the sanctuary, and then coming forth after 
prayer and twilight meditation, and saying, "There, 
I am consecrated." Consecration is going out into 
the world where God Almighty is, and using every 
power for his glory. It is taking all advantages as 
trust funds — as confidential debts owed to God. It 
is simply dedicating one's life, in its whole flow, to 
God's service. 



There is nothing which the world resents so much 
as an attempt to carry out a better measure than ex- 
isted before. A man who would benefit the world 
must take leave of his own reputation first ; for the 
world never let a man bless it but it first fought him ; 
it never let him give it a boon without first giving 
him a buffet. If with one effort you should raise a 
tree twenty feet high, so as to make it forty feet high, 
you would not do more violence to its roots than you 



Henry Ward Beec her. 235 

do to society when you attempt suddenly to elevate 
it above its former level. If there were a hundred 
violins together, all playing below concert pitch, and 
I should take a real Cremona, and with the hand of 
a Paganini should bring it strongly up to the true 
key, and then should sweep my bow across it like a 
storm, and make it sound forth clear and resonant, 
what a demoniac jargon would the rest of the playing 
seem ! Yet the other musicians would be enraged at 
me. They would think all the discord was mine, and 
I should be to them a demoniac. So it is with re- 
formers. The world thinks the discord is with them,' 
and not in its own false playing. All those rosy phi- 
losophers who go dancing along the ways of life, and 
expect to reform men through ease and pleasure, and 
are surprised when at first snow-flakes are thrown at 
them, and then icicles, and then avalanches, had bet- 
ter fold their gauzy wings at once. They are not 
wanted. They are not of that heroic race who ad- 
vance the world. 



Heart-knowledge, through God's teaching, is true 
wealth, and they are often poorest who deem them- 
selves most rich. I, in the pulpit, preach with loud 
words to many a humble widow and stricken man who 
might well teach me. The student, spectacled and 



236 Best Thoughts ef 

gray with wisdom, and stuffed with lumbered lore, 
may be childish and ignorant beside some old singing 
saint who carries the wood into his study, and who, 
with the lens of his own experience, brings down the 
orbs of truth, and beholds, through his faith and his 
humility, things of which the white-haired scholar 
never dreamed. 



Christ took the part of religion against religious 
institutions ; of religious feeling against religious 
usages, which are often venerable in proportion as 
they are nothing else. God's law of love, which the 
Jews had made stone, was smitten by Christ, and 
made to gush with water for the poor that lay athirst 
and gasping in the dust. 



No matter how infidel philosophers may regard 
the Bible ; they may say that Genesis is awry, and 
that the Psalms are more than half-bitter impreca- 
tions, and the Prophecies only the fantasies of brain- 
bewildered men, and the Gospels weak laudations 
of an impostor, and the Epistles but the letters of a 
mad Jew, and that the whole book has had its day ; 
I shall cling to it until they show me a better reve- 
lation. The Bible emptied, effete, worn out ! If 



Hinry Ward Beechef. $%J 

all the wisest men of the world were placed man to 
man, they could not sound the shallowest depth of 
the Gospel of John. O philosophers ! break the 
shell, and fly out, and let me hear how you can sing. 
Not of passion — I know that already ; not of worldly 
power — I hear that everywhere ; but teach me, 
through your song, how to find joy in sorrow, strength 
in weakness, and light in darkest days ; how to bear 
buffeting and scorn, how to welcome death, and to 
pass through its ministration into the sphere of life ; 
and this, not for me only, but for the whole world 
that groans and travails in pain ; and until you can do 
this, speak not to me of a better revelation. 



The great ocean is in a constant state of evapora- 
tion. It gives back what it receives, and sends up 
its waters in mists to gather into clouds ; and so there 
is rain on the fields, and storm on the mountains, 
and greenness and beauty everywhere. But there are 
many men who do not believe in evaporation. They 
get all they can and keep all they get, and so are not 
fertilizers, but only stagnant, miasmatic pools. 



An acorn is not an oak-tree when it is sprouted. 
It must go through long summers and fierce winters ; 



238 Best Thoughts of 

it has to endure all that frost, and snow, ana thunder, 
and storm, and side-striking winds can bring, before 
it is a full-grown oak. These are rough teachers; 
but rugged schoolmasters make rugged pupils. So 
a man is not a man when he is created — he is only 
begun. His manhood must come with years. A 
man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to 
his grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man. In 
time of war, whom does the general select for some 
hazardous enterprise? He looks over his men, and 
chooses the soldier whom he knows will not flinch at 
danger, but will go bravely through whatever is al- 
lotted to him. He calls him that he may receive his 
orders, and the officer, blushing with pleasure to be 
thus chosen, hastens away to execute them. Difficul- 
ties are God's errands. And when we are sent upon 
them we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence 
— as a compliment from God. The traveller who 
goes round the world prepares himself to pass through 
all latitudes and to meet all changes. So a man 
must be willing to take life as it comes; to mount 
the hill when the hill swells, and to go down the hill 
when the hill lowers ; to walk the plain when it 
stretches before him, and to ford the river when it 
rolls over the plain. " I can do all things through 
Christ which strengtheneth me." 



Henry Ward Beecher. 239 

There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce 
with temptation than singing with prayer. 



If the architect of a house had one plan and the 
contractor had another, what conflicts would there 
be ! How many walls would have to come down, 
how many doors and windows would need to be 
altered, before the two could harmonize! Of the 
building of life, God is the Architect and man is the 
contractor. God has one plan and man has another. 
Is it strange that there are clashings and collisions ? 



Thinking is creating, with God, as thinking is 
writing, with the ready writer; and worlds are only 
leaves turned over in the process of composition, 
about his throne. 



Our sweetest experiences of affection are meant 
to be suggestions of that realm which is the home of 
the heart. 



Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just 
as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death. You 
go and bury a seed, and that is husbandry ; but you 



240 Best Thoughts of 

bury one that you may reap a hundred- fold. Self- 
denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of 
it ; it belongs to human life. The lower nature must 
always be denied when you are trying to rise to a 
higher sphere. It is no more necessary to be self- 
denying to be a Christian than it is to be an artist, 
or to be an honest man, or to be a man at all, in dis- 
tinction from a brute. Of all joyful, smiling, ever- 
laughing experiences, there are none like those which 
spring from true religion. " When the Lord turned 
again the captivity of Zion, then was our mouth filled 
with laughter." 



The apostle says, " Now unto Him that is able to 
do exceeding abundantly, above all that we x:an ask 
or think." What a vision he must have had ! How 
grandly in that moment did the divine thought rise 
before his enrapt mind when he so linked words to- 
gether — joining golden word to golden word, as if he 
fain would encompass it with a chain, seeking by 
combinations to express what no one word could em- 
body ! "Above all that we can ask or think!" 
How much can a man ask or think ? When the 
deepest convictions of sin are upon him, in his hour 
of dark despondency, in some perilous pass of life, 
when fears come upon his soul as storms on the Lake 



Henry Ward Beet 'her. 241 

Galilee, consider how much a man then asks! Or 
when love swells in his soul, and makes life as full as 
mountains make the streams in spring, and hope is 
the sun by day and the moon by night, — in those 
gloriously elate hours when he seems no longer fixed 
to space and time, but, mounting as if the body were 
forgotten by the soul, wings his way through the 
realm of aspiration and conception, consider how 
much a man then thinks ! All books are dry and 
tame compared with the great unwritten book uttered 
in the closet. The prayers of exiles, of martyrs, of 
missionaries, of the Waldenses, of the Covenanters, of 
mothers for children gone astray, when with plash of 
tears, and yearnings that can find no speech, they im- 
plore God's mercy upon them, — if some angel, catch- 
ing them as they were uttered, should drop them 
down from heaven, what a liturgy would they make ! 
What epic can equal those unwritten words which 
pour into the ear of God out of the heart's fulness ! 
still more, those unspoken words which never find the 
lip, but go up to heaven in unutterable longings and 
aspirations ! Words are but the bannerets of a great 
army, a few bits of waving color here and there ; 
thoughts are the main body of the footmen that 
march unseen below. Words cannot follow thoughts 
and feelings even in their tamer flights, still less when 
they take wings and soar towards God. Every day, 



242 Best Thoughts of 

from my window, I see the gulls making circuits and 
beating against the north wind. Now they mount 
high above the masts of vessels in the stream, and 
then suddenly drop to the water's edge, seeking to 
find some eddy unobstructed by the steady-blowing 
blast ; till, at length, abandoning their efforts, they 
turn and fly with the wind ; and then how like a 
gleam of light do their white wings flash down the 
bay faster than eye can follow ! So, when we cease 
to resist God's divine influences, and, turning towards 
him, our thoughts and feelings are upborne by the 
breath of his spirit, how do they make such swift 
heavenward flight as no words can overtake ! 

Yet, wonderful as are the desires and thoughts of 
the soul, the apostle's measurement is more than these ; 
for he says, "Now unto Him that is able to do .ex- 
ceeding abundantly, above all that we ask or think!" 
Truly his riches are unsearchable. 

If we dwelt more upon God's fulness and'his desire 
to make us partakers of it, our Christian character 
would be richer. God never reveals himself to us as 
a distant, glimmering light. Of all stars he calls him- 
self "the bright and morning star" — the star that lin- 
gers longest in the sky, and swims and glorifies an 
avant- courier of the sun, as John the Baptist did in 
the rising splendor of Christ. Many people get a 
wrong idea of God by thinking of him as infinite only 



Henry Ward Beeclier. 243 

in justice and power : but infinite applies to the feel- 
ings of God, as much as to the stretch of his right 
hand. There is nothing in his nature which is not 
measureless. Many think God sits brooding in heaven, 
as storms brood in summer skies, full of bolts and 
rain, and believe that they must come to him under 
the covert of some apology, or beneath some umbrel- 
laed excuse, lest the clouds should break and the 
tempest overwhelm them. But when men repent to- 
wards God, they go not to storms, but to serene and 
tranquil skies, and to a Father who waits to receive 
them with all tenderness, and delicacy, and love. H 1#Q 
eye is not dark with vengeance, nor his heart turbulent 
with wrath ; and to repent towards his justice and vin- 
dictiveness must always be from a lower motive than 
to repent towards his generosity and love. 

This view of God's plenitude, habitually taken, will 
deliver us from unworthy fears, and enable us with 
confidence to approach his throne. It will give us 
hope of rectitude in life, and of glorification in 
heaven ; not because of our feeble longing, but be- 
cause of God's infinite desire for us. When stars, first 
created, start forth upon their vast circuits, not know- 
ing their way, if they were conscious and sentient, 
they might feel hopeless of maintaining their revolu- 
tions and orbits, and despair in the face of coming 
ages. But, without hands or arms, the sun holds 



244 Best Thoughts of 

them. Without cords or bands the solar king drives 
them unharnessed on their mighty rounds without a 
single misstep, and will bring them, in the end, to 
their bound without a wanderer. Now, if the sun can 
do this, the sun, which is but a thing, itself driven and 
held, shall not He who created the heavens, and gave 
the sun his power, be able to hold us by the attraction 
of his heart, the strength of his hands, and the omnip- 
otence of his affectionate will ? 

But some will say, " Such views will lead to Uni- 
versalism." Does Matthew teach this ? Does Mark, 
or Luke, or John teach it ? Do they say, " To be 
sure God is a God of love, but take care that you do 
not presume upon it " ? No. The first, and second, 
and third view of God is love. Justice is alternative. 
He has conscience and integrity, and he must pre- 
serve the rectitude of his kingdom ; but love is his 
abiding-place. When men were almost animals, fear 
was employed to bring them to God ; but when they 
were driven a certain way towards right, then God 
sent higher influences to act upon them. He gave 
his Son to die for the world ; and a thousand men will 
be drawn by Calvary, where one will approach through 
the terrors of Sinai. The New Testament opens with, 
" Peace on earth, good will to men ;'" and these were 
the last words that rung through the air before the 
vision faded : " And the Spirit and the bride say v 



Henry Ward Beecher. 245 

Come ; and let him that heareth say, Come ; and let 
him that is athirst come ; and whosoever will, let him 
come and drink of the water of life freely; " and all 
between these two magnificent notes rolls the anthem 
of God's mercy. " Whosoever will." That is the 
beginning and the ending. Let every Christian heart 
respond in those final and sublimest words of revela- 
tion, " Even so, come, Lord Jesus !" 



Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever 
made and forgot to put a soul into. 



Far in the woods of Maine, in these winter months, 
there are a hundred camps, and scores of axemen are 
busy cutting down the huge trees, and measuring the 
logs, and sorting them, and throwing them into deep 
gullies, where they will lie dry and undisturbed until 
the snows melt, and the spring floods come, and then 
they will be borne out of the ravines into the ever 
deep-flowing river, and from thence to some Penob- 
scot or Kennebec, and there collected together, and 
bound in mighty rafts, they will float down to tide* 
waters. So men are lying, dry logs along empty 
channels, hoping that some revival freshet will come 
and sweep them down to deep waters of piety. 



246 Best Thoughts of 

It is not desirable that we should live as in the con- 
stant atmosphere and presence of death ; that would 
unfit us for life ; but it is well for us, now and then, 
to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and 
to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the ex- 
periences of that land to which it will lead us. These 
forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented 
with life, but to bring us back with more strength, 
and a nobler purpose in living. A banner long un- 
used, and laid away in a dark chamber, grows dusty 
and moth-eaten, and needs, for its preservation, to be 
unrolled and shaken out, and borne high in air : so 
our spiritual life decays in the confinement and dark- 
ness of the world ; and that it may gain new vigor, 
our thoughts must now and then be unfurled, and 
held high, and shaken in the air of heaven. 



A man who emigrates from the low country of 
selfishness, where are perpetual chills and fevers, to 
the high lands of benevolence, goes from sickness and 
barrenness to the realm of health, and plenty, and joy, 
where his hand can almost pluck the fruits from the 
tree of life itself. 



Suffering, in repentance, is not in itself merito- 
rious ; it is only instrumental. Many persons aim at 



Henry Ward Beecher. 247 

suffering as a mode of producing a change of heart ; 
but this is the monkish idea of bodily torture for 
penance. Old warriors, whose lives had been spent 
in crime and self-indulgence, saw some vision, some 
stag in the woods with a cross between his horns, and 
forthwith they were frightened, and resolved to amend 
their ways, and clothed themselves in haircloth, and 
were miserable the rest of their days to atone for the 
sins of their youth. Now, our asceticism has gone 
beyond this. It does not relate to the body, but to 
the mind. One who in youth has strayed from virtue 
never forgets his error, but checks every smile with 
"you remember," and lets gall from the old bitterness 
exude on every flower of pleasure. This is not God's 
example. He says, if we turn from sin he will make 
no mention of our transgressions, and our iniquities 
he will remember no more. So, when we have ^hearti- 
ly repented of wrong, we should let all the waves of 
forgetfulness roll over it, and go forward unburdened 
to meet the future. " Forgetting those things which 
are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which 
are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of 
the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 



A low and normal action of fear leads to forecast ; 
'ts morbid action is a positive hinderance to effort, 



248 Best Thoughts of 

Water is necessary for the floating of timber ; but if 
a log be saturated with water, it sinks in the very 
element which should buoy it up. Many men are 
water-logged with anxiety, and instead of quickening 
them, \t only paralyzes exertion. 



Morality is character and conduct, such as is re- 
quired by the circle or community in which the man's 
life happens to be placed. It shows how much good 
men require of us. Religion is the endeavor of a man 
with all his mind, and heart, and soul, to form his life 
and his character upon the true elements of love and 
submission to God, and love and good will to man. 
A spiritual Christian is like a man who learns the 
principles of music, and then goes on to the practice. 
A moralist is like a man who learns nothing of the 
principles, but only a few airs by rote, and is satisfied 
to know as many tunes as common people do. Mo- 
rality is good, and is accepted of God, as far as it 
goes ; but the difficulty is, it does not go far enough. 
" Is not my fifty-fathom cable as good as your hundred- 
fathom one ?" says the sailor. Yes, as far as it goes ; 
but in water a hundred fathoms deep, if it does not 
go within fifty fathoms of anchorage, of what use will 
it be in a stofm ? 

The Christian and the moralist are alike in many 



Henry Ward Beecher. 249 

things, but by and by the Christian will be admitted 
to a sphere which the moralist cannot enter. A 
barren and a fruitful vine are growing side by side in 
the garden, and the barren vine says to the fruitful 
one, — 

" Is not my root as good as yours ?" 

" Yes," replies the vine, "as good as mine." 

"And are not my lower leaves as broad and spread- 
ing, and is not my stem as large, and my bark as 
shaggy?" 

"Yes," says the vine. 

"And are not my leaves as green, and have I not 
as many bugs creeping up and down, and am I not 
taller than you ?" 

" Yes," meekly replies the vine, " but I have 
blossoms." 

" O ! blossoms are of no use." 

" But I bear fruit." 

" What, those clusters ? Those are only a trouble 
to a vine." 

But what thinks the vintner ? He passes by the 
barren vine ; but the other, filling the air with its odor 
in spring, and drooping with purple clusters in autumn, 
is his pride and joy ; and he lingers near it, and prunes 
it that it may become yet more luxuriant and fruitful. 
So the moralist and the Christian may grow together 
for awhile; but bv and by, when the moralist's life is 

t 



250 Best Thoughts of 

barren, the Christian's will come to flower and fruitage 
in the garden of God. " Herein is my Father glorified, 
that ye bear much fruit." 



There are few complete loves on earth. Though 
thousands love, and earnestly, yet no one knows the 
whole want of his life till he has met that which is a 
supply to all — mind to mind, heart to heart, faculty 
to faculty. But the supply is so scanty, and man is 
so poor ! It is only God who can satisfy the soul. 



We bury men when they are dead, but we try to 
embalm the dead body of laws, keeping the corpse in 
sight long after the vitality has gone. It usually 
takes a hundred years to make a law ; and then, after 
it has done its work, it usually takes a hundred years 
to get rid of it. When we have gained our health, 
we do not repeat the portion of medicine, but we 
keep on dosing with law when the evil which it was 
meant to cure has passed away. 



Nothing which comes into the world in the way 
of divine truth is ever lost. You may open your 
cage and let your singing bird fly out, an4 be may 



Henry Ward Beec her. ^51 

wander away, and the song he sang you may never 
hear in your home again ; but when God opens the 
door of heaven, and lets some singing truth, angel- 
winged, fly down to earth, it is never lost, but one 
catches the strain here, and another repeats it there, 
till at length it becomes choral. 

The truth may change its form; it may be hid for 
years and generations; but, as the old wheat-seeds, 
wrapped in the mummies of Egypt, now, after ages, 
sought out by prying travellers and planted, are 
found not to have lost their germ, but to have kept it 
through the sleep of three thousand years, so God's 
truths, hid in dead forms and institutions, slumbering 
in the grave of old books and libraries, or banished 
from polite society to live in the rags of the vulgar, 
do at length come forth with unimpaired germ, losing 
no more by their burial than did Christ, their Master. 
Like him they carry an unquenched heart through 
the grave. They bring forth light from its darkness, 
and in spite of brute force and watchful authority, 
they stand again upon the earth, and look abroad 
with eyes of immortality. 



Heathenism was always exalting the top of society, 
the great men, and taking no thought for the masses 
Ipelow them. Christianity says, "The great and the 



252 Best Thoughts of 

strong can take care of themselves," and so seeks to 
elevate the lowest and poorest. Christ never warned 
us against not respecting a king's crown; but his 
words were, " Whoso shall offend one of these little 
ones which believe in me, it were better for him that 
a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he 
were drowned in the depth of the sea." As in the 
family, it is not the son of twenty-one years, but the 
babe, whom the mother rocks to sleep in the cradle, 
so, in Christ's family of earth, it is not the full-grown 
and the mature for whom he most tenderly provides ; 
it is the weak, and those on whom the world's law 
tramples, that he takes tenderly up with his strong 
arm, and rocks in the cradle of his love and care. 



The elect are whosoever will, and the non-elect 
whosoever won't. 



The growth of Christian life is to be measured by 
the growth of love; and love itself is to be measured 
in its progressive states by its restfulness, its undis- 
turbed trust, its victory over every form of fear. The 
state of perfect loving is incompatible with distrust. 
When the heart is first awakened to affection, it is 
disturbed and agitated. It fluctuates with every shade 



Henry Ward Beecher. 253 

of hope and fear alternately. It rushes from one ex- 
treme of confidence to the opposite of doubt. But 
this is only while it is filling. The heart beginning 
to love is like a bay into which the star-drawn tides 
are rushing. The waters come with violence. They 
stir up the sand and sediment. They dash and mur- 
mur on the edges of the shore. They whirl and chafe 
about the rocks, and the whole bay is agitated with 
strife and counter-strife of swirling waters, until they 
have nearly reached their height. Then, when great 
depth is gained, when the shores are full, when no 
more room is found for the floods, the bay begins to 
tranquillize itself, to clear its surface ; and effacing 
every wrinkle, and blowing out every bubble, and 
hushing every ripple along the shore, it looks up with 
an open and tranquil face into the sky, and reflects 
clearly the sun and moon that have drawn it thither. 
And so does the soul, while filling, whirl with dis- 
quiet, and fret its edges with wrinkles and eddies ; but 
when it is filled with love, it rests and looks calmly 
up, and reflects the image of its God ! 



The truths of the Bible are like gold in the soil. 
Whole generations walk over it, and know not what 
treasures are hidden beneath. So centuries of men 
pass over the Scriptures, and know not what riches 



254 Best Thoughts of 

lie under the feet of their interpretation. Some- 
times, when they discover them, they call them new 
truths. One might as well call gold, newly dug, new 
gold. 



God is a being who gives everything but punish- 
ment in over-measure. The whole divine character 
and administration, the whole conception of God as 
set forth in the Bible and in nature, is of a being 
of munificence, of abundance and superabundance. 
Enough is a measuring word — a sufficiency and no 
more; economy, not profusion. God never deals in 
this way. With him there is always a magnificent 
overplus. The remotest corner of the globe is full 
of wonder and beauty. The laziest bank in the 
world, away from towns, where no artists do congre- 
gate, upon which no farm laps, where no vines hang 
their cooling clusters, nor flowers spring, nor grass 
invites the browsing herd, is yet spotted and patched 
with moss of such exquisite beauty that the painter 
who in all his life should produce one such thing 
would be a master in art and immortal in fame, and 
it has the hair of ten thousand reeds combed over its 
brow, and its shining sand and insect tribes might 
win the student's lifetime. God's least thought is 
more prolific than man's greatest abundance. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 255 

At first babes feed on the mother's bosom, but 
always on her heart. 



All the might of the world is now on the side 
of Christianity. Those barbarous, inchoate powers 
which still cling to heathenism are already trembling 
before the advancing strides of the Christian nations ; 
Christian just enough to rouse all their energies, and 
to make them intensely ambitious and on the alert 
to increase their own dominion, without having 
learned Christianity's highest lesson, the lesson of 
love. 

Even that heathenism which seems to have some 
power is only waiting for its time of decay. In vast, 
undisturbed forests, whose intertwining boughs ex- 
clude the light, moisture is generated, and rills, fed 
by marshes and quiet pools, unite to form running 
rivers. But let the trees be cut down and the 
ground be laid open to the sun, and the swamps will 
dry up and the rivers run no more. So is it with 
the Brahmins, and with all the effete teachers of 
heathenism. As long as the dense shadows of igno- 
rance brood over the people, they will possess some 
little trickling power ; but let the light of knowledge 
shine in upon the masses, and the channels of their 
influence will dry up and be forgotten. 



256 Best Thoughts of 

Already, war, with its bloody hand, raps at the 
gate of empire in India and in China. England 
presses upon them. Russia is steadily moving 
through craunching snows to the southward. The 
great nations, like lions roused from their lairs, are 
roaring and springing upon the prey, and the little 
nations, like packs of hungry wolves, are standing 
by, licking their jaws, and waiting for their share 
of the spoils. The world is out hunting — what? 
Heathenism. And it will be caught ; it will be 
unearthed. A little while and there will be no den 
so deep, or forest so dark, or island so remote, that it 
can find refuge. 



Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of 
men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve 
others from the duty of respecting them at all. 



In my schoolboy drawing lessons, when I came to 
the human face, my master gave me first the eyes ' to 
practice upon, and then the nose, and then the 
mouth, and then the ears, and then the brow and 
hair, and after long weeks the day came when I was 
to combine them. I knew where to set the eyes, 
one over against the other, where to draw down the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 257 

nose, and to open the mouth, and to place the ears, 
and to shade the hair about the forehead ; and so, at 
last, I had a perfect face. Now, God is the great 
draught-master, and the world is his pupil. Here 
and there, through laws and institutions, he is de- 
veloping the single features, and at length the day 
will come when they shall be combined to form a 
perfect manhood in Christ Jesus. 

At the Military Academy, the soldiers are taken 
separately to the drill-room, and there the martinet 
puts them through all the steps, and passes, and 
gestures which they are required to learn ; and when 
they have been trained and disciplined, they come to 
the parade-ground ; and then, at the word of com- 
mand, platoons march, and squadrons wheel, and the 
great army, as one man, moves to the voice of its 
leader. Now, God's formative influences in this 
world are his military academies, his drill-rooms, 
where for centuries the soldiers of the cross have 
been trained ; but the day is coming when he shall 
put to his lips the trumpet of announcement, and 
when, with uplifted standard and triumphal music, he 
shall lead forth his vast army to go round and round 
the world with victory ! 



How in the household are garments quilted, and 



258 Best Thoughts of 

wrought, and curiously embroidered, and the softest 
things laid aside, and the cradle prepared to greet the 
little pilgrim of love when it comes from distant re- 
gions, we know not whence. Now, no cradle for an 
emperors child was ever prepared with such magnifi- 
cence as this world has been for man. It is God's 
cradle for the race ; curiously carved and decorated, 
flower-strewn and star-curtained. But because it is 
the cradle, and because we are yet in our infancy, God 
had not scope to give himself expression. What is to 
come we know not. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the 
things which God hath prepared for them that love 
him." 



As prisoners in castles look out of their grated 
windows at the smiling landscape where the sun comes 
and goes, so we, from this life, as from dungeon bars, 
look forth to the heavenly land, and are refreshed 
with sweet visions of the home that shall be ours 
when we are free. 



Christ declared without qualification, " I am the 
light of the world." What thunderous strokes should 
beat down the audacious man who should dare to say 



Henry Ward Beecher. 259 

this ! If Christ had not been the absolute one, he 
would have said, " I am the moon, shining by night, 
but my spoused one, the sun, from whom I receive 
my beams, shines by day." 

* Again : " If any man thirst, let him come unto me 
and drink." What man would dare to say of merely 
physical things, " If any man lacks knowledge, let him 
come to me"? Neither Humboldt, nor Liebig, nor 
Agassiz would dare to say this, even of the depart- 
ments in which they are preeminent, how much less 
of the whole range of learning ! yet Christ, disdaining 
physical things, appeals at once to the soul with all its 
yearnings, its depths of despair, its claspings, — like a 
mother feeling at midnight for the child whom death 
has taken, — its infinite outreachings, its longings for 
love, and peace, and joy, which nothing can satisfy 
this side of the bosom of God, and says, " If any man 
thirst, let him come unto me and drink." He stands 
over against whatever want there is in the human 
bosom, whatever hunger there is in the moral faculties, 
whatever need there is in the imagination, and says, 
"He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he 
that believeth on me shall never thirst." 



There is no heresy, in the long list of heresies which 
have invaded the church, like the heresy of negative- 



260 Best Thoughts of 

ness, of inaction, of death. The dead man is the great 
heresiarch. 



Nowhere in the Bible is it said, " Give Christ what 
is due to him, but leave some store for God when you 
reach heaven." On the contrary, we are pressed, we 
are urged, we are crowded, we are touched by the 
Bible on every hand, as summer soil is by summer 
sun, to spring forth in all growths, both high and low, 
and to give them all into the bosom of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Should a vine wind its thousand tendrils 
round a trellis, its life would be destroyed if they were 
rudely cut and torn away. Now, the soul has more 
tendrils than any climbing vine, and if they have all 
clung about the Lord Jesus as their divine support, 
how worse than death will it be to wake up in the 
awful judgment to find that he is but a creature, and 
to be wrenched forever from him ! If Christ be not 
God, then to worship him is idolatry, and the Father 
has deluded and deceived the world. 

O Lord Jesus ! my heart cries out from its depths 
that thou art very God. In thee I find rest and satis- 
faction. Thy heart opens like summer to one who 
navigates from high northern latitudes, and takes me 
into its tropical embrace. All thoughts and feelings 
that rise, singing, in my soul, fly home to thee as birds 



Henry Ward Beecher. 261 

to their nests. And thy stores are infinite. When the 
mother tires of the child, and puts it away from the 
bosom where it draws its sweet life ; when the friend 
who has yearned for love says to the loving one, 
" Enough, I am sated ; " when the soul that has known 
only dreary wastes of experience, having come at last 
to a realm of song and bloom, calls back the darkness 
and the desert ; even then, O Lord, I shall not weary 
of thee ! But where in my heart there is one drop of 
affection, I would increase it till it should be as the 
unmeasured ocean ; where now I look at thee with 
adoring eyes, I would multiply my glances till my face 
should glow as does the sky when night reveals the 
stars ; I would dedicate myself to thee — various, uni- 
versal, total self — to thee, my King and my God ! 



There are many professing Christians who are se- 
cretly vexed on account of the charity they have to 
bestow, and the self-denial they have to use. If, 
instead of the smooth prayers which they do pray, 
they should speak out the things which they really 
feel, they would say, when they go home at night, "O 
Lord, I met a poor wretch of yours to-day, a miser- 
able, unwashed brat, and I gave him sixpence, and I 
have been sorry for it ever since ;" or, " O Lord, if I 
had not signed those articles of faith, I might have 



262 Best Thoughts of 

gone to the theatre this evening. Your religion de- 
prives me of a great deal of enjoyment ; but I mean 
to stick to it. There's no other way of getting into 
heaven, I suppose." 

The sooner such men are out of the church the 
better. 



If, every time conscience was wronged, it sighed, 
and every time reason was perverted, it uttered com- 
plaints, no one could live for the moaning which 
would fill his soul. 



Some men, when they attempt to reform their lives, 
reform those things for which they do not much care. 
They take the torch of God's word, and enter some 
indifferent chamber, and the light blazes in, and they 
see that they are very sinful there ; and then they 
look into another room, where they do not often stay, 
and are willing to admit that they are very sinful 
there ; but they leave unexplored some cupboards and 
secret apartments where their life really is, and where 
they have stored up the things which are dearest to 
them, and which they will neither part from nor 
suffer rebuke for. 



The young, who recoil from impositions, sometimes 



Henry Ward Beecher. 263 

say, " I have no proof of invisible things. I will be- 
lieve in nothing which my reason does not show me." 

The differences between men lie in their power and 
scope of rising above the senses into the region of 
the invisible. All men in action, if not in profession, 
recognize this life beyond the senses. The material 
man says, " I believe in nothing which I cannot see," 
and so he goes about collecting facts from observa- 
tion. But what does he do with them ? He sublimes 
them into a principle, and that is invisible. 

You may unscrew and take off the end of a tele- 
scope, and you will have only a magnifying-glass with 
which you can examine the objects about you. Re- 
turn it to its place, and new powers will be added to 
it, and things which are remote will begin to lift 
themselves with marvellous clarity. Draw out the 
tube, and you can pierce yet farther the distance, till 
at length your vision sweeps the stellar universe. 
Now, we can employ our reason upon the material 
things about us ; and it is reason still, only in a higher 
form, when we draw it out and give it a successional 
power, and behold through it that which lies beyond 
the region of the senses ; and when we extend it to 
its utmost capacity, and the lenses are all right, we 
can look through it into heaven itself, and the mag- 
nificent background is the glory of God Almighty. 

That state of mind in which a man i§ impressed 



264 Best Thoughts of 

with invisible things is faith. It is the use of the 
mind and the soul power, in distinction from the body 
power. Men have such a narrow view of what faith 
is that they look for it as one 'would look for a dia- 
mond ; whereas they should look for it as treasure. 
Treasure may be precious stones, or gold, or raiment, 
or fragrant woods ; treasure is a hundred things, dia- 
mond is but one ; so faith is not a special thing, as 
many people make it. It does not apply to religion 
alone, but to all the departments of life. It is simply 
such a carriage of the soul as lifts it into the realm of 
the invisible, so that the man lives by his higher facul- 
ties, rather than by his lower. Even in the most 
practical matters, that man succeeds best who has the 
most of this element. The difference between a 
merchant-prince and a petty trader is that the trader 
can work only as far as he sees. He must be able to 
put his hand on cask, and box, and bale, while he 
whom we call the merchant-prince disdains to stop at 
what he can see and handle, but goes beyond and 
deals with the relations of things, and anticipates re- 
sults, and taking into account time, and space, and 
quality, and quantity, and seasons, and races, and lati- 
tudes, he makes the whole earth minister to his need. 
This is commercial faith. In affairs of state, the man 
who looks only at forms of law, and at the daily 
routine of government, is but a politician ; while he 



Henry Ward Beecher. 265 

who comprehends those great, stately principles which 
walk, known or disguised, through all things, and who 
looks forth with clear vision to see the bearing of the 
present upon the future, is a statesman. This is politi- 
cal faith. There are many people who are so refined 
in their tastes — and by refinement I mean the passage 
of a thing from a gross form to its evanishing point in 
the immaterial — that they live in the ideal rather than 
in the actual. Such have an aesthetical faith. They 
have so cultivated their eye for colors that they can 
almost see the gleaming of the precious stones in the 
wall of heaven ; and they have taught their ear so to 
appreciate harmonious sounds that they can almost 
hear the celestial bells ringing sweet invitation to 
them ; and they have so strengthened and purified 
their social natures that the fiery edges of heavenly 
affection almost touch theirs, as cloud-lightning 
touches cloud-lightning. How wretched will such be, 
when through death they really enter the realm of the 
invisible, to find that they have failed of the highest 
faith, the faith of the moral nature, which alone will 
admit them to the companionship of God ! 

May all of us have that faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ which availeth, that faith which worketh by 
love, and so, though we have begun in the egg on 
earth, yet, through God's brooding, before we know 
it, we shall chip the shell ; and though we have lain 



266 Best Thoughts of 

so long, coiled up and helpless, we shall begin to put 
forth plumes; and, disdaining the nest, and rinding 
the ground chilly beneath our feet, with every gath- 
ering feather we shall pine for the air, and, pining, 
begin to try those notes which we are yet to learn ; 
and, at length, in some bright and beaded morning, 
we shall spread our wings, and rising above the tangle 
and the thicket, soar through the blue, singing to the 
gate of heaven ! 



If we should gather all the flowers that grow upon 
the mountain-sides and in the valleys, and heap them 
up before God, he would not be richer than he is 
now ; but when we bring ourselves to him, and affec- 
tion after affection opens and exhales in his presence, 
he is richer, and his joys are greater. 



Many people seem to imagine that God keeps a 
gracious apothecary's shop above, with faith, and 
meekness, and humility put up in bottles ready for 
purchasers, and that, as they could go into a per- 
fumer's here below and ask for this or that extract, 
so they can go to God and ask for this or that grace. 
They think if they go into their closet at night and 
pray with faith for faith, if the expression be not an 



Henry Ward Beecher. 267 

absurdity, that the next morning it will be delivered 
to them. Christian graces can never be obtained in 
this way. They must be the outgrowth of the life. 
The prayer for graces will be answered, but God will 
make us work out each one with fear and trembling. 
The spire that almost touches the stars does not rise, 
isolated, from the ground ; beneath it, and supporting 
it, is the massy substructure, the vast cathedral of 
stone. So faith cannot soar alone to heaven ; it must 
be the steeple and spire of the whole life-building. 



All true ambition and aspiration are without com- 
parisons. 



As, — in some summer's morning which wakes with 
a ring of birds, when it is clear, leagues up into the 
blue, and everything is as distinctly cut as if it stood 
in heaven and not on earth, when the distant mount- 
ains lie bold upon the horizon, and the air is full of 
the fragrance of flowers which the night cradled, — 
the traveller goes forth with buoyant and elastic step 
upon his journey, and halts not till in the twilight 
shadows he reaches his goal, so may we, who are but 
pilgrims, go forth beneath the smile of God, upon 
our homeward journey. May heaven lie upon the 



268 Best Thoughts of 

horizon, luring us on ; and when at last we sink to 
sleep, and dream that we behold again those whom 
we "have lost, may we wake to find that it was not a 
dream, but that we are in heaven ; and may the chil- 
dren for whom we have yearned, and the companions 
who anticipated us and gained heaven first, come to 
greet us ! Then, sweeter than all, may we behold the 
face of the Lord Jesus, our Master, our Life, and 
cast ourselves before him, that he may raise us up 
with great grace, to stand upon our feet forevermore ! 



Some men think that religion is a mere ecstatic 
experience, like a tune rarely played upon some fac- 
ulty ; living only while it is being performed, and 
then dying in silence. And, indeed, many men carry 
their religion as a church carries its bell— high up in 
a belfry, to ring out on sacred days, to strike for 
funerals, or to chime for weddings. All the rest of 
the time it hangs high above reach — voiceless, silent, 
dead. But religion is not the speciality of any one 
feeling, but the mood and harmony of the whole of 
them. It is the whole soul marching heavenward to 
the music of joy and love, with well-ranked faculties, 
every one of them beating time and keeping tune. 

The religious life is thoughtful, but thought is not 
alone its nature, It is full of afTection, but it has 



He?iry Ward Beecher. 269 

more than mere feeling; it abounds in grand moral 
impulses. Effervescent experiences are not its char- 
acteristic. It is the soul of a man made wondrously 
rich, moving to the touch of divine influence, in every 
way to which so facile and elaborate a creature as 
man can move. There is no end to its combinations. 
It shapes itself beyond all enumeration of shapes. It 
thinks in vast and fathomless streams. It wills with 
all attitudes of authority and decision. It feels with 
all moods and variations of social affection. It rises, 
by the wings of faith, into the invisible, and fashions 
for itself a life there, glowing with every imaginable 
ecstasy. And neither one of these is religion more 
than another. It is the whole soul's life that is re- 
ligion. When the sun rose on Memnon, it was 
fabled to have uttered melodious noises; but what 
were the rude twangings of that huge, grotesque 
statue, compared with the soul's response when God 
rises upon it, and every part, like a vibrating chord, 
sounds forth, to his touch, its joy and worship ? 



As one familiar with the sonatas and the sym- 
phonies of Beethoven, while passing along the street 
in summer, gets, from out of the open window, a 
snatch of a song or a piece that is being played, 
catching a strain here and another there — and says 



270 Best Thoughts of 

to himself, '.'■ Ah, that is Beethoven. I recognize 
that: it is from such and such a movement of the 
Pastoral," or whatever it may be ; — so men in life 
catch strains of God in the mother's disinterested 
and self-denying love, in the lover's glow, in the 
little child's innocent affections. Where did this 
thing come from ? No plant ever brought out such 
fruit as this. 



No character of God is rightly put together or 
rightly conceived of in which the overruling sover- 
eignty does not inhere in love. And any character 
of God which is fashioned to produce any other im- 
pression than that, any character which presents him 
to your thought as more wise than love, more true 
than love, more pure than love, any conception of 
God which is stronger in your mind than that of a 
real sympathetic, loving God, — is false. 



I would not say that God turns the brightest side 
of his nature to those who have stumbled and fallen ; 
but in all those ways in which men are harassed by 
a sense of mistake that might have been avoided, in 
all their struggles under great sorrows and bereave- 
ments, in those sorrows which come in a rain of 
y 



Henry Ward Beecher. 271 

distress, in all the alarms of life, in all the burdens 
that come upon men, — over against them stands a 
Saviour adapted to the special sorrow that they them- 
selves carry. He is all in all; that is, in every part 
of a man's life there is an aspect of God in Jesus 
Christ that mitigates the special trouble, that is 
adapted to the special want : and the revelation of 
God's love in Jesus Christ should enable every man 
who puts trust in him, and accepts him as the guide 
and captain of his salvation, to rise higher. It lifts 
him in the time of his emergency, shelters him in 
danger, and brings # him to that rest which does not 
depend upon conscious purity, but depends upon a 
sense of God's love, and upon trust and faith in 
him. 



The Bible is God's house. Here in this book is 
where saints have lived. Here is where holy men 
have persevered. Here is where men in great dis- 
tress have learned how valiantly to endure and to 
achieve. This book is filled full of dear associations. 
Here are passages that I walked through when my 
first-born died. Here is where I found comfort 
when I was in great distress and torment. Here is 
where I first saw the Star of Bethlehem. 



272 Best Thoughts of 

The power of love, and the power 01 sympathy, 
and the power of succor through sympathy and love, 
— that is the revelation of the Bible. 



I do not believe there is in the compass of human 
literature a book that deals with such profound 
topics, that touches human nature on so many sides 
of experience, that relates so especially to its sorrows, 
its temptations, and yet which looks over the whole 
field of human life with such cheerfulness of spirit. 
The New Testament is a book of radiant joy. 



The New Testament is full of cheer and of bright- 
ness from Christ's manifestation of sympathy ; and 
the Book of the Hebrews, arguing to the Jewish 
mind, and therefore employing Jewish symbols, is 
peculiarly full of this glorious truth of the active and 
sympathetic nature of God. 

That the silent Jesus is now gone forward to 
other things, that he dwells above to maintain inti- 
mate and helpful relations with all who love him 
here, that he is nearer to men than when he was 
present with them, that it was needful for our sakes 
that he should go up to his own sphere, and resume 



Henry Ward Beecher. 2 73 

his spiritual nature, — these are abundantly the teach- 
ings of the New Testament. 



All the way through the Gospels, all the way 
through the letters of the apostles, they write almost 
with a mothers tenderness. They take the side of 
mankind in misfortune, in sorrow, in sin, and in 
trouble. 



No susceptible nature ever reads the marvellous 
chapters containing Christ's love-talk in the seclusion 
of home and in the last hours that he was spending 
peacefully with his disciples, without feeling that 
they are full of meanings for which ordinary life 
furnishes no clue. 



What was your mother's nature, that cried when 
you cried, or laughed away your tears, and watched 
you by night and through the day, and died taking 
care of you ? You know what that is in a mother. 
" Oh ! is there a God like that ? " Yes, one as much 
better than that as infinity is better than finiteness, 
— as much better than that as divinity is better than 
humanity. No latitude or longitude can measure the 



2^4 Best Thoughts of 

orb of the glory of that heart which is in God, and 
which is manifested by Jesus Christ. 



Sometimes I have thought in my meditation, " If 
Christ would descend but as a beam of light, that I 
might see him, it would be such a help to my senses ! " 
And I have listened at night, I have listened in hours 
of sorrow, and I have heard nothing. I have called, 
and none has answered. I have reached out implor- 
ing hands, and nothing took them. I have said, " My 
Lord and my God, if thou art, speak to me/" and 
there has been no response. And yet out of these 
hours I have come, feeling still that a silent and invis- 
ible God can be more to me, taking life all through, 
than if he were actually present and visible in a bodily 
form. I take hold of the invisible by more sides than 
I do of the visible. 



Our dear Master is father and mother to us; and 
the sympathy of Christ with us — do not suppose it is 
just this : that when you are glad, Christ is glad ; and 
when you are sorrowful, Christ is sorrowful. It is 
that, to be sure ; but it is a thousand times more than 
that, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 275 

And wherever men are struggling, and striving, and 
suffering, be sure that the life of Christ is there. For 
he does not wrap himself up in his heavenly home, 
and look out of the window, only, upon this far-off 
earth : he lives in our nature. 



All those indescribable and tender graces which 
make mother the queenly name in all the earth, Christ 
has in such abundance and perfectness that a mother's 
heart by the side of his would be like a taper at mid- 
day. All that which the child yearns for while a child, 
and remembers with homesickness afterwards, when 
grown up ; all those qualities that make men look back 
for their paradise to their childhood, and make them 
feel too often that life is a wilderness, and their early 
homes the place of love and joy and sweet fruition, — 
are not so dominant in father and mother as they are 
in Jesus. He is more fatherly than fathers, and more 
motherly than mothers. 



Love, which is represented in the New Testament, 
% and of which Christ was the particular exemplar, is sym- 
pathy for universal sentient existence, for all that live. 
And it is a sympathy which carries their welfare with 



276 Best Thoughts of 

it. It is love, whether it strike, or pierce, or slay, or 
give bitter medicine, or give the cup of sorrow, or 
give the cup of joy. It is love, whether it wring tears 
or inspire smiles. 



Clothed with patience and sympathy, Jesus Christ 
presents himself to us. He went about doing good. 
He wept. He sorrowed. He walked with the poor 
and the needy. 



Our dear Master loves us ; and, loving us, he means 
to make something out of us. And his sympathy is 
an echo of our heart. The sympathy of Christ works 
in us by seeking to draw us up, above all the familiar 
experiences of our woe, into his own nature and char- 
acter. 



The Christ that delivered us ; the Christ that sus- 
tained us when our babe dropped away from our arms ; 
the Christ that held us up when all men were against 
us, and it seemed as though the full breath of winter 
was cutting through and through ; the Christ of the 
household, my mother's Christ, my father's Christ, the 
Christ of all my life, — at last begins to rise before me 
in my later years. As I die, I do not go towaxd. the 



Henry Ward Beec her, 277 

barren and fhe voiceless land : I go toward all that 
my heart has ever known of joy and of nobility. 



And so, as a bird flies up out of a storm-shaken 
forest, and seeks more peaceful places, his spirit had 
lifted itself higher than battle, and above its stroke or 
sound. 



Whoever finds his cup filled to the brim with 
bitterness, which he cannot put away from his lips, 
and which his lips do not dare to drink ; whoever 
finds that tears are his meat and drink, day and night, 
and yet gives up no particle of hope, but stands in 
his darkness and in his sufferings, saying, "Jesus, 
Jesus, Jesus!" still laying back his head upon the 
bosom of Christ's love, and saying, " Though he slay 
me, yet will I trust in him," — whoever does these 
things is watching with Christ, for Christ is working 
in him. This is the sacred hour of Gethsemane to 
him. He is truly watching with the Master. 



Suffering and joy, working together, are God's 
two schoolmasters. They regulate, they discipline, 
and they fashion men, These are the great factors 



278 Best Thoughts of 

which inhere in nature, and by which the scheme of 
God in the universe is being unfolded, and carried on 
to its final consummation and triumph. 



Crying is good : crying washes out the channels. 
Heartache is good : it is medicine. It does men 
good to cry. 



In this great and in many respects strange econo- 
my of life, men are not free from suffering. I mean 
especially physical suffering. We often inherit bodies 
that entail a necessity of suffering. Sickness, bruises, 
wounds, the various assaults that are made upon 
human life, — these bring men to pain ; and physical 
pain, in all its ten thousand forms, becomes an ele- 
ment of patience. It is the soul teaching itself to 
endure under conditions of suffering. It is a new 
manhood rising up. 



We see in life that no characters are so admirable 
as those that have been shaped by a great deal of 
trouble. Dr. Spurzheim, among a thousand other 
insights and maxims of wisdom, said that no woman 
was fitted to become a wife until she had seen suffer- 
ing. I would only correct it by adding that no man 



Henry Ward Bee cher. 279 

is fitted to become a husband who has not seen some 
suffering. Suffering has on manly natures a ripening 
influence. It tends to drive one in upon those 
fountains that not only are inward, but are the most 
profound. You will see that when brooks flow from 
the mountains, though as they begin to go down they 
move gently and smoothly and sweetly, yet when at 
last they come to the chasm, the waters plunge down 
suddenly to the bottom, and, finding no outlet, whirl 
round and round, and, seizing a rock which happens 
to be there, turn it over and over perpetually, and 
wear the place deeper and deeper, so that it never 
becomes dry. And it is troubles which roll about in 
men's souls that dig deep places in them which even 
in the droughts of summer never are dry. 



We need a trust that shall take hold upon God 
with such a large belief of his love and constancy as 
shall carry us right on over rough as well as over 
smooth ground ; through light and darkness ; through 
sickness, bereavement, loss, trouble, and long-pressing 
afflictions. At noon we need not a torch : it is in 
darkness that one should carry a light. 



Takjng the average of men's lives, the/ suffer 



280 Best Thoughts of 

more from things that never happen than from 
things that do happen. How many times in summer 
has that black cloud which was full of mighty storms, 
and which came rising, and opening, and swinging 
through the air, gone by without a drop of rain from 
it ! It was a wind-cloud. And how many times 
have there been clouds rolled up in men's heaven, 
which have apparently been full of bolts of trouble, 
but which have not had a trouble in them ! Yet 
when they are gone, men forget to learn any wisdom. 



Suffer as the vine does. The cutting-off of the 
branch by the pruner's knife is not lost strength. 
The vine says, " If I may not grow in that direction, 
I will grow in some other direction." And so it 
pours new blood into the cluster, and more sugar 
goes to each grape. And God prunes those that he 
loves, that they may bring forth more and better 
fruit. 



I have stood upon Mount Holyoke when I heard 
the thunder below ; and I have seen men travelling 
up the side, and making haste to get out of the 
storm. I, standing higher than they, escaped both 
the rain, the wind, and the pelting thunder; and 



Henry Ward Beecher. 28 r 

they, going up through the storm, gut on the u .j r 
and were also free from it. Many, many stomui 
there are that lie low, and hug the ground ; and the 
way to escape them is to go up the mountain-side, 
and get higher than they are. 



There is no such perfect rest or peace as that 
which comes to men when all parts of their nature, 
in proper relations to each other, are lifted to the 
highest possible tension. The indwelling of God 
does not produce the quietude of insensibility or of 
indifference, but it produces that peace which comes 
from courage and hope and aspiration, calm and 
intense. 



Blessed are those persons into whose presence we 
go rejoicing, and out of whose presence we come 
still more joyful. It is the quality of God's soul, 
when it comes down into ours, to fill it with peace 
— that peace " which passeth all understanding." 
Perfect harmony, that is the peace which God brings 
to us when he comes into our souls. And O how 
full of hope and comfort is this view ! 



Speak, mothers who have been sustained in the 



282 Best Thoughts of 

midst of troubles that rasped the soul to the very 
quick ; who have been upborne under trials that 
seemed likely to break down heart and body. Testify 
that nothing but Christ's presence kept you, and that 
that did keep you in perfect peace. There are be- 
reaved hearts and weeping eyes innumerable that 
need the refuge which you have found. 



In a sad hour I have seen, through the window, 
mounted on a rail back of my house, one of these 
curious-eyed little sparrows. And he was a better 
preacher to me than I am to you. It was winter, and 
there was not guaranteed to it one day's food, nor any 
protection, from any source in this world. It was 
wholly dependent upon its God. And yet it sang — 
sang for its own hearing, and sang for my rebuke, 
saying to me, " Are ye not much more than I ? and 
God thinks of me, and takes care of me." How 
much there is in the voice of nature, if we only knew 
how to interpret it ! 



Men feel that the attempt to carry the minutiae of 
our lives into the presence of our God would be pre- 
posterous. Nay : because he is God, he is able to 
take in the universal love of God, The minutest 



Henry Ward Beecher. 283 

things are known to him. The very hairs of your 
head are numbered. And not one of the sparrows 
that hop and leap on the leafless boughs of the trees 
about your house shall fall without God's knowing it. 
But are ye not more valuable than many sparrows ? 



If you were to chase each particular care, and each 
particular fret, and each particular sorrow, you would 
have business, on hand for the rest of your life ; but 
if you can rise into a higher state of mind, these cease 
to be annoyances and cares. Ninety-nine parts in a 
hundred of the cares of life are cured by one single 
salve, and that is " Thy will be done." The moment 
a man can say that, and let go, that moment more 
than ninety-nine parts in a hundred of his troubles 
drop away. 



There are many people who have storms, but there 
are very few who know how to put rainbows over 
them. 



It is not always that we are taken into the rest of 
God through Jesus Christ by the removal of the 
things that trouble us. The apostle Paul records the 



284 Best Thoughts of 

fact, — and it is one of the most striking of expert 
ences, — that, lest he should be lifted up by the abun- 
dance of the revelations given to him, there was sent 
unto him a thorn in the flesh. No matter what it 
was, it was a trouble, a great sorrow to him. He be 
sought the Lord thrice that it might be removed ; 
but the Lord said, " My grace shall be sufficient for 
you. I will uphold you, so that you can bear that 
thorn, whatever may be your trouble." He did. He 
lifted him so high in time that Paul declared that he 
rejoiced in infirmities and in trials. They became a 
subject and source of actual joy to him. 



The blossoms are not always on the tops of the 
trees. They are sometimes on the branches that are 
down near the ground. I have seen aunts, I have 
seen maiden sisters, I have seen plain sewing-women, 
I have seen the lowest in poverty, who stood with 
such erect, sweet, pure heavenly-mindedness, that it 
was worth a man's while to go and look at them, to 
renew his own faith in himself. Men are frequently 
comforted and cheered by the exemplary lives of 
those who are quietly living in Christ Jesus. 



Is there anybody who enjoys as much as I do the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 285 

little children on the street? They are a perpetual 
anthem to me. I thank God every growing year of 
my life that there is so much that is sweet and beauti- 
ful in childhood. They come to me like so many 
songs. And it is not that they are my own or my 
neighbors' children, but that they are God's children. 
The street is full of them, and no picture that was 
ever painted is so beautiful to me as the scene which 
they present. And when they have passed from 
childhood to youth, my interest in them is not abated. 
It is a joyous spectacle to see their growth and devel- 
opment toward manhood and womanhood. And is 
there any one who sees them when they walk to the 
altar to take upon them the vows of the marriage- 
hour without feeling an inexpressible sympathy for 
them ? Not when I lay persons in the grave, and 
say the last words of love over them, is my heart 
touched as much as when I pronounce a benediction 
on those who are starting in life. And yet neither 
children, nor youth, nor those who are entering upon 
the full flush of manly joy, are to me half so beautiful 
as are those revered persons whose faces are seamed 
and marked with care, and who have come out sweet- 
eyed, having gone through suffering. When persons 
have grown up, and married, and become parents, and 
lost their children, or borne with the long infirmities 
of their children, and had the weight of life come 



26b Best Thoughts of 

crushingly upon them, but have yet risen in the 
divine strength above their troubles, stand with their 
sufferings registered in lines upon their forehead, 
in those lips which have lost their fullness and 
pristine beauty, and in their gray hairs, with a noble 
halo surrounding them in their old age, — what can 
be more beautiful than their hope and sweet serenity ? 
It makes us wonder that the angels do not take 
them home. Such persons constitute to me the 
highest ideal of earthly beauty. And they furnish an 
example of what suffering does if it is only allowed 
to have its perfect work, according to the economy 
by which it is administered in the divine system. 



How beautiful it is to see a man or a woman who 
has come to the state of ripe patience ; the serene 
face of the matron, on whom all sweetness and good- 
ness wait, who is living just at the golden sunset of 
her life, and who has been through trials and sorrows 
unnamed,— -for the greatest sorrows of this life never 
come to the surface, — broken-hearted almost, yet, by 
her faith in God, enduring till one and another thing 
is removed, and her life at last is completed, and she 
stands in the golden light waiting ! How beautifu' 
is the serenity of victorious age that has not been 



Henry Ward Beecher. 287 

overthrown, that has gone through the rugged way, 
and across Jordan into the promised land ! 



God is not like foolish parents, who take the spoon 
of noxious medicine, and put it to the lips of the 
child, and say, lying : " Take it, my dear : it is sweet 
and good." God is like an honest parent, who says 
to the child : " It is very bitter, my dear ; but you 
must take it, for it will make you feel better by 
and by." So it is of bereavement and of all such 
sufferings. 



Frequently the keenest sufferings which men are 
called to endure in this world arise from their sym- 
pathetic relations. While love pleases, and is a 
source of innumerable comforts, it carries with it 
also the possibilities of great suffering. It is im- 
possible that you should attach yourself to another 
and not be affected by his prosperity or adversity. 
We all do " weep with them that weep," and " re- 
joice with them that do rejoice." We are so united 
to our friends that we cannot help bearing their 
burdens. 



If you ask me, when I stand in the garden among 



288 Best, Thoughts of 

flowers of rare forms and colors and odors, " Why 
do you count them useful ? what are they good for ? " 
my reply is, " Their simple presence, the mere fact of 
their symmetry, exquisite color, and odor, does me 
good." And there are often persons of whom you 
cannot say a great many things as to deeds, nor any- 
thing specifically as to positive qualities of character, 
who yet are so made that their very being carries 
with it joy and pleasure. If to this be added far 
more, as in some lives, — if, one by one, we can call 
up in our memories all offices of sympathy, all minis- 
trations of kindness, all anticipations lest others 
should not be served, all delicacy, all fidelity ; if the 
life has been like music, full of concords, full of 
sweetness, — then there are two ways to look at it : 
one is to say, " I have not lost it ! " another to say, 
" Blessed be God that I have had it so long." 



The grave is but the shutting of the angel hand 
that keeps the treasure, and conveys it safely to the 
other side. As they who sail over the seas go down 
into the vessel, and are hid, so the grave is but the 
resting-place of the dead for a little time — not decay, 
not loss, not final separation in darkness. 



We are not to say, " Why did I loose such a 



Henry Ward Beec her. 289 

friend?" but, " Having lost such a friend, how shall 
I be more a man in consequence?" Ask, " How 
shall I see the bright lining that is beyond the dark 
cloud?" In other words, study suffering through 
the lens of hope. Look forward, and not backward. 



There is one word that always makes me shiver 
with feeling: " I shall be satisfied." She has in- 
herited the meaning of that word : she is satisfied. 
We do not come to-day to mourn, though we shed 
tears. We are glad for what she has : we would not 
draw her from that sphere. She has heard the wel- 
come ; she has begun, in a sweeter voice than she 
ever knew on earth, the music that never ends. Yet 
is she near to us all. Imagination re-creates her 
image, and it hangs in the heavens to be an eternal 
gladness to us. We should draw near to God with 
thanksgiving, with supplication for our unworthiness, 
out with thanksgiving, for the crowning mercy which 
has been vouchsafed to this dear child. 



We are never ripe till we have been made so by 
suffering. We belong 9 to those fruit's which must be 
touched by frost before they leave sourness, and come 
to their sweetness. 



290 Best Thoughts of 

The experience of ev*ery fresh mourner is, " I 
knew that death was in the world, but I never thought 
that my beloved could die." Every one that comes 
to the grave says, coming, " I never thought that I 
should bury my heart here." Though from the be- 
ginning of the world it hath been so, yet no man 
learns the lesson, and every man lays out his paradise 
afresh, with a love that sees no change, and expects 
no sorrow. 



We are moving faster as every cord is loosed that 
binds us to earth, faster as every heart that we loved 
draws us upward. Let us rejoice. And as in autumn 
the very earth prepares for death as if it were its 
bridal, and all the sober colors of the summer take 
higher hues, and trees and shrubs and vines go forth 
to their rest wearing their most gorgeous apparel, as 
ending their career more brightly than they began it, 
so let our spirits cast off sombre thoughts and sable 
melancholy, and clothe themselves with all the radi- 
ancy of faith, with every hue of heavenly joy. 
" Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." 



When our children that are so dear to us are 
plucked out of our arms and carried away, we feel for 



Henry Ward Beecher. 291 

the time being that we have lost them, because our 
body does not triumph. But are they taken from our 
inward man ? Are they taken from that which is to 
be saved — the spiritual man ? Are they taken from 
memory ? Are they taken from love ? Are they taken 
from the scope and reach of the imagination, which 
in its sanctified form is only another name for faith ? 
Do we not sometimes dwell with them more in- 
timately than we did when they were with us on earth ? 
The care of them is no longer ours ; that love-burden 
we bear no longer, since they are with the angels of 
God and with God ; and we shed tears over what 
seems to be our loss. But do they not hover in the 
air over our heads ? 



Oh, it is not when your children are with you ; it is 
not when you see and hear them, that they are most 
to you : it is when the sad assembly is gone ; it is 
when you have carried your children out, and said 
farewell, and come home again, and day and night are 
full of sweet memories ; it is when the daisies have 
resumed their growing again in the place where the 
little form was laid ; it is when summer and winter are 
full of touches and suggestions of them ; it is when 
you cannot look up toward God without thinking of 
them, nor look down toward yourself and not think 



2g2 Best Thoughts of 

of them ; it is when they have gone out of your arms, 
and are living to you- only by the power of the imagi- 
nation, — that they are the most to you. The invisible 
children are the realest children, the sweetest children, 
the truest children — the children that touch our hearts 
as no hands of flesh ever could touch them. 



From the standpoint of the family, what a glimpse 
we get of the world to come, where the law is love, 
where the human heart feeds itself from the great 
Fountain of life and light and love, God, and where 
every one is to every one in intensity of affection what 
the wisest, deepest-hearted mother is to the babe that 
lies in her bosom ! In such society as that, one's 
weary soul might long to rest. And when it pleases 
God, marking those that are fit for heaven that he 
wants for it, to call them home, oh, into what summer 
they go from earthjy winter, and into what blessed 
society do they enter, — into that rest which remaineth 
for the people of God, and where the whole outflow 
of life divine and angelic is as the radiancy of a 
mother's heart over her first-born and best beloved ! 
God takes them up into his arms, and puts his hand 
upon their head, and loves them, saying to every be- 
reaved heart, "Suffer little children to come unto 
me. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 293 

I believe that we shall know our children, as I 
believe that they shall know us. Will they not have 
grown ? Very likely : I do not know ; I can not say. 
One thing I believe ; and that is, that faith, hope, and 
love are not relative. All that in my children which 
contained the seed of promise, all that which made 
them my companions and my joy,— that shall abide, 
and shall be mine. They will not appear as they did 
in their mortal bodies. Their bodies will then be rare 
and exquisite compared with those which they wore 
on earth. But there will be lineaments by which I 
shall identify them. And this is my liberty. It is not 
God's revelation. It is my necessity. And I am not 
rebuked when I indulge in such thoughts. My heart 
cries out to those who have loved me and gone to the 
heavenly land ; and when I cry to them, I hear a 
voice answering, as the Spirit and the bride are repre- 
sented as saying: tl Come !" At night, by day, at twi- 
light, in joy and in sorrow, I hear the voices of loved 
ones saying, " Come !" 



It is not w r ise, when we are suffering, to look back 
too much for the causes of our suffering, or to ques- 
tion what it can have been sent for, or why God deals 
so with us. 

Look at the murmuring of a young mother ! Her 



294 Best Thoughts of 

life was one flush of joy so long as her cradle was to 
her like the gate of heaven ; but the cradle is desolate, 
and she sits alone, and she says: "What have I done? 
Why has God been so cruel to me ? " 

O foolish creature ! do you suppose all suffering is 
sent according to desert ? 

Now God puts you under a discipline of suffering, 
and leaves you to say, not this: "Where did it come 
from ?" but this, " What can I do with it?" It is not 
for us to say: "Why was I sick?" but " Having been 
overtaken by sickness, what can I do with it, what 
learn from it, how best use it for my own good ? " 



Some seem to think that a man, to be a Christian, 
ought to be able not to suffer when suffering comes ; 
but the ache of suffering is a part of its medicine. A 
mother is not called upon, when she has given up her 
child to God, to say, "I suffer none." You are to 
suffer. No afflictions for the present are joyous, but 
grievous ; nevertheless, afterward they yield the peace- 
able fruit of righteousness unto them that are ex- 
ercised thereby. 



Tce breaks many a branch, and so I see a great 
many persons bowed down and crushed by their afflic- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 295 

tions. But now and then I meet one that sings in 
affliction, and then I thank God for my own sake as 
well as his. There is no such sweet singing as a song 
in the night. You recollect the story of the woman 
who, when her only child died, in rapture looked up 
as with the face of an angel, ami said, " I give you 
joy, my darling." That single sentence has gone with 
me, years and years, down through my life, quickening 
and comforting me. 



When the young mother sheds the first glowing 
leaf in autumn, and the babe is carried from her arms 
and buried, and she, like some fragrant bush in the 
morning covered with dew, shakes tears from every 
twig, because I, too, do not measure every one of her 
sobs, do I not sympathize with her? For I say to 
myself, " What is this loss but the making of a greater 
nature in her?" She buries the babe to keep it. So 
only do we keep our children as children, when we 
put them away from us in infancy, and see them no 
more until we meet them in heaven. They remain 
shrined in the imagination, and they are little children 
for ever. And do I not see what patience and gentle- 
ness it will work in her, and what serene dignity is 
already beginning to steal upon her ? And do I not 
know that God is calling her in taking this little child ? 



296 Best Thoughts of 

He does not take it, perhaps, for the purpose of edu- 
cating her, but he takes it for his own wise purposes ; 
and the sorrow that is left behind is a means of edu- 
cation. 



O mother ! my heart breaks with your heart when 
your cradle is empty. But shall I call back the child ? 
Nay ; sooner pluck a star out of heaven than call back 
that child to this wintry blast. Shall I call back your 
young and dear and blooming friend ? Nay. You are 
left in some bitterness for a time. But make not a 
man out of angel again. Let him rejoice. 

Your child is in a spring-land. It is in a summer- 
world. It is with God. You have given it back to 
Him who lent it to you. 

Now, the giving back is very hard. But you can- 
not give back to God all that you received with your 
child. You cannot give back to God those springs 
of new and deeper affection which were awakened by 
the coming of this little one. You cannot give back 
to God the experiences which you have had in dwell- 
ing with your darling. You cannot give back to 
God the hours which, when you look upon them 
now, seem like one golden chain of linked happiness. 

You are better, you are riper, you are richer, even 
in this hour of bereavement, than you were. God 



Henry Ward Beec her. 297 

gave, and he has not taken away except in outward 
form. He holds, he keeps, he reserves, he watches, 
he loves. You shall have again that which you have 
given back to him only outwardly. 

Meanwhile the key is in your hand. And it is not 
a black iron key : it is a golden key of faith and of 
love. This little child has taught you to follow it. 
There will not be a sunrise or a sunset when you will 
not in imagination go through the gate of heaven 
after it. There is no door so fast that a mother's love 
and a father's love will not open it, and follow a be- 
loved child. And so, by its ministration, this child 
will guide you a thousand times into a realization of 
the great spirit-land, and into a faith of the invisible, 
which will make you as much larger as it makes you 
less dependent on the body, and more rich in the 
fruitage of the spirit. 



Suppose, when God spares the life of your child, 
you should say (if you are blessed with the means), 
" I will make this significant by finding an orphan- 
child, and I will make my benefaction to that child a 
perpetual memorial for the life of my dear child." Or 
has God taken away your child, that sweetest girl ? 
As you lay her in the grave, you will need no me- 
morial of her, Yet the hand of God was in the event. 



298 Best Thoughts of 

Why should you not set apart something to signify 
your sense of God's presence with you in your af- 
fliction ? 



Do men go to school because they know so much, 
or because they know so little? Do men go to a 
physician because they are sick, or do they wait till 
they are well and then go ? Yet to hear people speak 
of uniting with the church one would suppose that 
they thought it their duty to stay out till they were 
perfect, and then to join it as ornaments. They who 
are weak, but who wish strength ; they who are 
ignorant, but hunger for knowledge ; they who are 
unable to go alone, and need sympathy and society to 
hold them up ; they who are lame, and need crutches, — 
in short, they who know the plague and infirmity of a 
selfish heart, a wordly nature, a sinful life, and who 
desire above all things to be lifted above them, have 
a preparation, for the church. If you could walk 
without limping, why use a crutch at all ? If you are 
already good enough, why go into a church ? But if 
you are so lame that a staff is a help, so infirm that 
company and ordinances will aid you, then you have a 
right to the fellowship of the church. To unite with 
a church is not to profess that you are a saint, that 
yea are good, and still less that you are better than 



Henry Ward Beecher. 299 

others. It is but a public recognition of your weak- 
ness and your spiritual necessities. The church is not 
a gallery for the better exhibition of eminent Chris- 
tians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones, 
a nursery for the care of weak ones, a hospital for the 
better healing of those who need assiduous care. 



How does one begin to learn Latin? Not charmed 
with the numbers of Virgil, but stumbling over the 
grammar; digging at roots of verbs. As it is with 
study, so it is with religion. No one should be dis- 
appointed if the early experiences of his Christian life 
involve many doubts and fears. A new life, like a 
new river, has to pick its way and find its channel 
The waters will gather in pools, and seem to cease to 
flow. Rising over the brim, they will shoot through 
some rugged pass, and be swirled by a thousand 
jagged rocks ; but by and by, when the channel is 
secured, and side-streams begin to add their stores, 
the river will neither stop nor grow dry. There is no 
power on earth that can hold back the river from the 
ocean, or the Christian life from heaven. 



God's promises were never-meant to ferry our lazi- 
ness. Like a boat, they are to be rowed by our oars ; 



300 Best Thoughts of 

but many men, entering, forget the oar, and drift 
down more helpless in the boat than if they had staid 
on shore. There is not an experience in life by whose 
side God has not fixed a promise. There is not a 
trouble so deep and swift-running that we may not 
cross safely over, if we have courage to steer and 
strength to pull. 



Many of our troubles are God dragging us, and 
they would end if we would stand upon our feet, and 
go whither he would have us. 



In December the days grow shorter till the twenty- 
first, the shortest day, when, at a precise moment, the 
sun pauses and begins to return towards the north. 
And then, though the days are constantly growing 
longer, and the sun coming nearer, yet for weeks 
there is no apparent change. The snow lies heavy 
upon the earth. There are neither leaves, nor blos- 
soms, nor singing birds ; nothing to mark the summer 
time which is surely advancing. But at length the 
ground begins to relax in the sunny places, and the 
snows melt, and warm winds blow from the south, 
and buds swell, and flowers spring, and ere long there 
is the bloom and glory of June. So, there is a pre- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 301 

cise moment when the soul pauses in its departure 
from God, and begins to return towards him. The 
fruits of that return may not be at once visible; there 
may be long interior conflicts before the coldness and 
deadness of the heart is overcome ; but at length the 
good will triumph, and instead of winter and desola- 
tion, all the Christian graces will spring up in the 
summer of divine love. 



The most you can do to a good man is to persecute 
him; and the worst that persecution can do is to kill 
him. And killing a good man is as bad as it would 
be to spite a ship by launching it. The soul is built 
for heaven, and the ship for the ocean, and blessed be 
the hour that gives both to the true element. 



There are many persons who have heard so much 
of family government that they think there cannot be 
too much of it. They imprison their children in stiff 
rooms, where a fly is a band of music in the empty 
silence, and govern at morning, and govern at night, 
and the child goes all day long like a shuttle in the 
loom, back and forward, hit at both ends. Children 
subjected to such treatment are apt to grow up in- 
fidels, through mere disgusts. 



302 Best Thoughts of 

The Bible, without a spiritual life to interpret it, 
is like a trellis on which no vine grows — bare, angular, 
and in the way. The Bible, with a spiritual life, is 
like a trellis covered with a luxuriant vine — beautiful, 
odorous, and heavy with purple clusters shining 
through the leaves. 



* I have seen birds sitting on the boughs and 
watching while other birds were feeding below. 
They would hop from twig to twig, and look wist- 
fully down upon them ; then, gathering courage, they 
would spring from their perch and back again, and 
finding that it did not hurt them, they would at last 
join the outmost circle and feed with the others. 
How many faces I have seen in these galleries, wear- 
ing a wistful look as they gazed down upon us while 
we were celebrating this ordinance of communion ! 
May God give all such wings, that they may fly down 
and be among his people, and partake with them of 
heavenly food ! 



A man who should sit down to the communion 
table, having bitterness against a brother in his heart, 

* At communion. 



Henry Ward Beecher. 303 

would he not do wrong ? " Yes," you answer at 
once. But it is communion every day. The body 
of Christ is wherever human bodies are, and he who 
has any bitterness against his brother is always com- 
mitting sacrilege. 



A missionary sends home his children to be edu- 
cated. They cannot be taught in the heathen coun- 
try where he dwells, and so some sister receives the 
precious charge, and endeavors to supply to them the 
place of father and mother. They are very ignorant 
when they arrive, but they are trained and watched 
over with assiduous care. Teachers are provided for 
them ; they are cultivated and developed on every 
side, and grow up to maturity, full of knowledge, and 
loveliness, and virtue. The time draws near when 
the parent shall come to claim them, and how anxious 
is their loving guardian lest he should be disappointed. 
Her constant thought is, " How shall I present these 
children acceptably to their father?" 

As the ship that bears him approaches the land, 
the longing father can scarcely wait to clasp his dear 
ones in his arms. He makes haste to go on shore ; 
he finds his sister's house, and when the first warm 
greetings are over, she leads him with trembling joy, 
and says: "Here are your children !" and the son 



304 Best Thoughts of 

whom he left, a fair-haired boy, comes forward, dark- 
haired, deep-eyed, and taller than his father ; and the 
daughter, who when he saw her last could do little but 
smile and cry, advances timidly, with blushing cheek, 
and all the grace of early womanhood. If they have 
been wayward and intractable, his love in that hour 
can overlook it all. If they have been docile and 
obedient, how gladly does he embrace them ! But if, 
more than this, they have striven to improve every 
advantage, and to make themselves worthy of their 
father, and of the kind friend who has guided them, 
with what rapture does he fold them to his heart ! 

Christians are God's children, whom he has sent to 
school upon earth, and Christ is their guide and 
teacher, who desires to present them to him " fault- 
less," " without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." 
When, through death, the Father comes to take them 
home, how is Christ's heart grieved to present those 
who have been wayward and worldly ! But they are 
children still, and the Father's love overlooks it, and 
they are " saved so as by fire." With subdued joy he 
presents those who have made no great attainments, 
but have yet been teachable and obedient, and they 
are welcomed to the heavenly inheritance. And then 
with radiant face he brings those shining bands who 
have been the true disciples, following gladly in the 
footsteps of the Master ; pressing forward through 



Henry Ward Beecher. 305 

toil and suffering to the prize, and the Father makes 
haste to greet them, and saying, " Come, ye blessed," 
folds them with rapture to his bosom ! 

The entering into heaven will reveal many things 
unknown on earth. Some whom the world thought 
saint-like will barely gain admittance there, and 
others who went all their lives in doubt and dread 
will have angelic welcome, and an abundant entrance 
into the heavenly kingdom. "The first shall be last, 
and the last shall be first." 

What do the flowers say to the night ? They wave 
their bells and exhale the choicest odors, as if they 
would bribe it to bestow upon them some new charm. 
In the tender twilight they look wistfully at each 
other, and say, " Do you see anything on me ? " and 
when the answer is, " I see nothing," they hang their 
heads and wait sorrowfully for the morning, fearing 
that they shall bring no beauty to it. Though there 
is no voice, nor sound, yet the night hears them, and 
silently through the still air the dews drop down from 
the sky, and settle on every stem, and bud, and blos- 
som ; and when day dawns, at the first rosy glance 
that the sun sends athwart the fields, ten million 
jewels glitter and sparkle, and quiver on the notched 
edges of every leaf, and along each beaded blade and 
spire of grass, and spray, and the happy flowers, 
stirred by the wind, nod, and beckon, and smile to 



306 Best Thoughts of 

to each other, more resplendent in their dewy gems 
than any dream of the night had imagined. So many 
Christians, who in the darkness of this life have 
longed and labored for graces, yet sad and fearing, 
will find themselves covered with glory when the 
eternal morning dawns, and the light of God's coun- 
tenance strikes through their earth-gained jewels ! 



There are few men, even among the most worldly, 
who do not expect to be converted before they die; 
but it is a selfish, mean, sordid conversion they want 
— just to escape hell and to secure heaven. Such a 
man says, " I have had my pleasures, and the flames 
have gone out in the fireplaces of my heart. I have 
taken all the good on one side; now I must turn 
•about if I would take all the good on the other." 
They desire just experience enough to make a key to 
turn the lock of the gate of the celestial city. They 
wish "a hope" just as men get a title to an estate. 
No matter whether they improve the property or not, 
if they have the title safe. A " hope " is to them 
like a passport which one keeps quietly in his pocket 
till the time for the journey, and then produces it ; 
or, like life-preservers which hang useless around the 
vessel until the hour of danger comes, when the cap- 
tain calls on every passenger to save himself, and 



Henry Ward Beecher. 307 

then they are taken down and blown up, and each 
man with his hope under his arm strikes out for the 
land ; and so, such men would keep their religious 
hope hanging idle until death comes, and then take it 
down and inflate it, that it may buoy them up, and 
float them over the dark river to the heavenly shore ; 
or, as the inhabitants of Block Island keep their 
boats, hauled high upon the beach, and only use 
them now and then, when they would cross to the 
main land, so such men keep their hopes, high and 
dry upon the shore of life, only to be used when they 
have to cross the flood that divides this island of 
Time from the main-land of Eternity. 



As a man who is ignorant of the workmanship of 
a watch tries to examine it, and after several bun- 
gling attempts succeeds in opening it, and then does 
not know where to find the mainspring or the hair- 
spring, or why the wheels play into each other, and 
at last shuts it again, so many men attempt self- 
examination. In the first place, they find it very 
hard to fix their thoughts. They cannot define their 
reason ; they do not understand the play of their 
affections, or their moral powers, and so, after a 
weary hour they shut themselves up again, and hope 
that in some mysterious way God will bless to them 



308 Best Thoughts of 

the effort at self-examination. A man might as 
reasonably look into a well to see the sun rise as to 
look thus into his heart with the expectation of good. 
Other men examine themselves on this wise. They 
sit down and try to recall all their thoughts, and 
feelings, and actions during the day, and then they 
question themselves, " Do you enjoy reading the 
Bible?" Yes, they believe they do. " Do you like 
Sunday?" Yes, on the whole, what with the music 
and all the rest, they think they do like Sunday. 
" Are you fond of religious conversation ? " Yes, if 
they can have their choice of people, they think they 
are fond of religious conversation. A vine would 
never be so stupid as to examine itself thus ; but 
suppose it should, and should call out, " Roots, do 
you enjoy being down there in the soil ? " " Yes, we 
enjoy being here in the soil." " Stem, do you like to 
be out there in summer ? " " Yes, I like to be out 
here in summer." "Leaves, are you fond of waving 
in the sun and air?" "Yes, we are fond of the sun 
and air," and, satisfied, it says, " I am an excellent 
vine." But the gardener, standing near, exclaims, 
"The useless thing! I paid ten dollars for the cut- 
ting, and I have pruned and cultivated it, and for 
years looked for the black Hamburg grapes it was to 
bear, but it has yielded only leaves." He does not 
care that the roots love the soil, and the stem the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 309 

summer. It makes no difference to him though 
every leaf spread itself broad as Sahara in its barren- 
ness. It is fruit that he wants. Now, reading the 
Bible is like the roots in the soil, and liking Sunday 
is like the stem in summer, and being fond of re- 
ligious conversation is like the leaves in the sun and 
air. If religion does not bring forth fruit in the life, 
all these things are as worthless in the sight of God 
as in the barren vine in the thought of the gardener. 
Around the chef-d' ceuvres in the galleries of Eu- 
rope, artists are always congregated. You may see 
them standing before Raphael's Transfiguration, 
copying with the nicest care, every line and tint 
of that matchless work ; glancing constantly from 
their canvas to the picture, that even in the minutest 
parts they may reproduce the original. But if at one 
side you saw an artist who only looked up occasion- 
ally from his work, and drew a line, but filled in here 
a tree or a waterfall, and there a deer or a cottage, 
just as his fancy suggested, what kind of a copyist 
would you call him ? Now, true self-examination 
lies in ascertaining how nearly we are reproducing 
Christ. He is painted for us in no gallery, but his 
life glows, fourfold, in the Gospels, and our hearts 
are the canvas upon which we are to copy it. Let us 
not take occasional glimpses, and work, meanwhile, 
upon earthly designs; but let us look long and 



310 Best Thoughts of 

earnestly till our lives reflect the whole divine 
image. 



Coming once down the Ohio River when the 
water was low, we saw just before us several small 
boats aground on a sandbar. We knew the channel 
was where they were not, and shaping our course ac- 
cordingly, we went safely by. They saw our inten- 
tion, and taking advantage of the light swell we 
created as we passed them, the nearest ones crowded 
on all steam and were lifted off the bar. Now, when 
in life's stream you are stranded on some bar of 
temptation, no matter what it is that makes a swell, 
if it is only an inch under your keel, put on all steam 
and swing off into the current. O what joy to glide 
down the river between green and flowery banks, and 
to know that every hour is bringing you nearer home ! 



Our people, nomadic as the Arabs, impetuous as 
the Goths and Huns, pour themselves along our 
Western border, carrying with them all their wealth 
and all their institutions. They drive schools along 
with them as shepherds drive sheep, and troops of 
colleges go lowing over the Western plains like 
Jacob's kine, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 311 

When I lived at the West, and preached some- 
times every day and evening in the week, in order to 
rest myself, upon my return home, I often took up 
some botanical work and studied it, and in this way 
made myself acquainted with the history and cultiva- 
tion of many plants which I had never seen. I even 
became a horticultural editor, and wrote familiarly of 
flowers which were known to me only through the 
botanist's description. When I came East, and went 
into a hothouse, I had to ask the names of the rarer 
plants ; for I had never had their seeds, nor seen them 
growing in my garden. One flower particularly at- 
tracted my attention, and I said to the gardner, 

"What is this?" 

" A Marie-Louise." 

" But I do not know of what family it is." 

He looked at me incredulously, for he had taken 
my paper, and supposed me learned in horticulture, 
as he answered : 

" It is a cineraria, sir." 

Now, there are many Christians who can talk 
learnedly of faith and humility, but who have never 
had them as seeds in their heart's garden, much less 
as perfect flowers, and who know so little of their real 
nature that when they see them blooming in some 
rich Christian heart, they have to ask their names be- 
fore they can recognize them, 



312 Best Thoughts of 

There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent 
and universal as that of hatred. There are hatreds of 
race ; hatreds of sect ; social and personal hatreds. 
If thoughts of hatred were thunder and lightning, 
there would be a storm over the whole earth all the 
year round. Twenty people cannot be together but 
some one suffers from their conversation. Let a man 
come into the company who from some cause is ob- 
noxious to them, and no sooner does he depart than 
the ill-smelling flowers of hatred swell their buds, and 
give forth their malign influences through the room. 
Towards many people we live in a state of negative 
dislike, which requires only a spark to kindle into a 
positive flame of hatred. Now of all this Christ says : 
" Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt 
love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy, but I say 
unto you, love your enemies." " Is there not an 
error in that translation ? " you say, for when the 
Bible reads as people do not wish it to, they think 
there is some mistake in the Greek. No, there is no 
error in the translation. " But it only means that we 
should feel kindly towards them, and let them alone." 
Not at all. " Bless them that curse you, do good to 
them that hate you, and pray for them which despite- 
fully use you and persecute you ; that ye may be the 
children of your Father which is in heaven ; for he 
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, 



Henry Ward Beec her. 313 

and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." You 
must not only chain these thoughts of hatred and put 
them down into the dungeon, but you must call up a 
choir of sweet singers in their places. Every time 
your enemy fires a curse, you must fire a blessing, and 
so you are to bombard back and forth with this kind 
of artillery. The mother grace of all the graces is 
Christian good-will. 



The pulpit should be like the key-board of an organ, 
and the church like the pipes. It is my business to 
press down the keys here, and it is yours to respond 
out there. Christian life ought to be so exhibitory 
that when you look at a Christian you will know 
what God's truth is. If one comes to me and asks 
the meaning of faith, and humility, and charity, I 
ought to be able to point to one man and say, " There 
is faith," and to another, ''There is humility," and so 
on through all the church and all the graces. Christ's 
kingdom will not come until his disciples are such 
"living epistles, known and read of all men." 



I believe there are many in this congregation who 
wake every morning to pray, and who never let the 
evening shadows go without perfuming them with 



314 Best Thoughts of 

their grateful thanks for the mercies of the day ; who 
study their Bibles more than many professing Chris- 
tians ; and who believe that the life they now live 
is by faith in the Son of God, but who yet do not 
wish to have it known/ and shrink from joining 
the church, and making a public acknowledgment 
of the debt they owe to Christ. They mean to be 
Christians, but not to avow themselves such. Thus 
they will leave the world to suppose that their mani- 
fest virtues are self-cultured, and that Christian lives 
may be led without Christ. 

If I were a pupil of Titian, and he should design 
my picture, and sketch it for me, and look over my 
work every day and make suggestions, and then, 
when I had exhausted my skill, he should take the 
brush and give the finishing touches, bringing out a 
part here and there, and making the whole glow with 
beauty, and then I should hang it upon the wall and 
call it mine, what a meanness it would be ! When 
life is the picture, and Christ is the designer and 
master, what greater meanness is it to allow all the 
excellences to be attributed to ourselves ! 

The engineer of an express train sees, just ahead, a 
switch wrongly turned, and knows that if he cannot 
stop the train it will go over the bank and be whelmed 
in instant destruction. The conductor jumps out, and 
the passengers after him, and run away across the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 3 1 5 

fields ; but the old engineer resolves to share the fate 
of the engine. Speedily he reverses the action, and 
with all his strength rolls back the wheels. Just as 
the fatal point is reached, they cease to move, and, 
the train is saved ! What meanness would it be, when, 
unharmed, they reach the town, for the conductor to 
say, " We were in great danger, but by my presence 
of mind I saved the train." Yet what greater meanness 
is it for us to take the credit to ourselves, when Christ 
saves us from the perils which lie in our way to 
eternity ! 

People sometimes say, " I am not a church member, 
but I am a better man than Mr. A, or Mr. B, who 
is." Perhaps you are ; but it is Christ, through the 
minister and the church, who has made you so. God's 
influences come in upon you in mighty tides, and 
purify your life, and you have no right to claim for 
yourself the graces which belong to Christ. 



A man might frame and let loose a star to roll in 
its orbit, and yet not have done so memorable a thing 
before God as he who Ws go a golden-orbed thought 
to roll through the generations of time. 



Do you ask, " Why not do away with the church, 



316 Best Thoughts of 

if its members make so many mistakes?" Would you 
take away the lighthouse because careless mariners, 
through wrong observations, run their ships high and 
dry upon the shore? Would you put out the lamp 
in your house because moths and millers burn their 
wings in it ? What would the children do ? 



It would be a dreadful thing to me to lose my 
sight ; to see no more the faces of those I love, nor 
the sweet blue of heaven, nor the myriad stars that 
gem the sky, nor the dissolving clouds that pass over 
it, nor the battling ships upon the sea, nor the 
mountains with their changing lines of light and 
shade, nor the loveliness of flowers, nor the burnished 
mail of insects. But I should do as other blind men 
have done before me : I should take God's rod and 
staff for my guide and comfort, and wait patiently for 
death to bring better light to nobler eyes. O ye who 
are living in the darkness of sin ! turn before it is too 
late to the light of holiness, else death will bring to 
you, not recreation, but retribution. Earthly blindness 
can be borne, for it is but for a day ; but who could 
bear to be blind through eternity ? 



As birds in the hour of transmigration feel the 



Henry Ward Beecher. 317 

impulse of southern lands, and gladly spread their 
wings for the realm of light and bloom, so may we, 
in the death hour, feel the sweet solicitations of the 
life beyond, and joyfully soar from the chill and 
shadow of earth to fold our wings and sing in the 
summer of an eternal heaven ! 



It is a part of our physiological nature that in order 
to the healthful development of our moral faculties, 
they must be placed highest, else they can no more 
flourish than could a plant growing under the shade 
and drip of trees. But most men make no provision 
for these faculties. Like a lighthouse, built well from 
foundation upwards, but without any place for the 
lantern, so many men build carefully their lower 
natures, but never rear the highest story. As a musi- 
cal instrument might have the base and tenor very 
well tuned and concordant, while, if you ran your 
fingers over the higher notes all would be clash and 
jargon, so men say, "' I must compose and harmonize 
myself to natural laws for the sake of health," and 
thus they tune the base ; and then they say, " I must 
have peace at home, and peace in my neighborhood," 
and so they regulate their social affections; and there 
are lofty flights of reason, and imagination, and art, 
and poetry, and music, and thus they tune the tenor ; 



318 Best Thoughts of 

but when they come to the highest notes, which were 
meant to be sweet to the ear of God, there is neither 
regularity nor concordance. All is void, vast, and 
mysterious in their moral nature. 



* It does my soul good to hear from you such 
cheerful testimony to the value of Christ's presence 
and blessing in affliction. At night, when a railroad 
train, having stopped at a station, is about to start again, 
in order that the conductor may know that every- 
thing is as it should be, the brakeman on the last car 
calls out through the darkness, " All right here !" and 
the next man takes up the word, "All right here!" 
and the next echoes, " All right here ! " and so it 
passes along the line, and the train moves on. It does 
me good to sit here while you speak of the life you 
are guiding through the world's darkness, and pass 
the word from one to another, " All right here ! " All 
is right everywhere when the heart is right. 



There never was a ray of starlight in the Mam- 
moth Cave of Kentucky; only the red glare of torches 
ever lights its walls. So there are many men whose 

* At a church prayer-meeting, where many had expressed their gratitude 
for God's sustaining grace in tri^.l. 



Henry Ward Bcecher, 3 1 g 

minds are Mammoth Caves, all underground, and un- 
lighted, save by the torches of selfishness and passion. 



You pray for the graces of faith, and hope, and 
love; but prayer alone will not bring them. They 
must be wrought in you through labor, and patience, 
and suffering. 

A garden has heard that the royal garden has a 
fountain, and sends up a petition to the head-gardener 
that it may have a fountain too. He favors the re- 
quest, and comes with workmen and the necessary 
implements to make it. The flower-beds are torn up, 
the turf is cut and removed, the earth is thrown out 
in piles, and the astonished garden exclaims, "What 
is this ? You are killing all my violets and roses. " 
And now the boring commences, down through the 
quicksand and the surface soil, till a bed of rock is 
gained. Then, when the severer drilling begins, the 
terrified garden cries out : " My foundations will be 
destroyed ! I thought I was to have a fountain." A 
small stream of water appears, but the gardener knows 
it would not always flow, and so he penetrates the 
earth yet farther, till at last, hundreds of feet below 
the surface, he reaches unfailing springs. Now the 
pipes are brought, and when they are adjusted, the 
earth is thrown back, the stones are removed, the turf 



320 Best Thoughts of Henry Ward Beec her. 

is replaced, the ground is swept, and the flowers re- 
turned to their beds ; and day in and day out the 
fountain plays, falling into its marble basin with 
ceaseless shower. The plants revive in its cooling 
spray, the birds come to sing to its music, and the 
whole garden rejoices in its beauty. 

Now, who is willing that God should bore in his 
heart for the grace of faith, and hope, and love? 
You pray for them, but when God begins to work, 
you cry out, " O Lord ! save my flower-beds. You 
are killing all my violets and roses." Yet only 
through this working are the wells of salvation dug 
in our hearts, and the living waters made to flow. 



" Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love,— these three ; 
but the greatest of these is love ;" for love is the 
seraph, and faith and hope are but the wings by 
which it flies. 



N* 






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